


Coworking Space

by FriendshipCastle



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Depression, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Lup's POV, T for swears, not like. immediately but it shows up, the T is for swears and implied sex now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-03-07 03:59:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 18
Words: 28,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13426341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FriendshipCastle/pseuds/FriendshipCastle
Summary: Lup's perspective on a few moments over the many, many years and the long, long journey to finding family and home.I like aliens and friends and thinking about outer space. Stolen Century was my jam but there weren't enough weird worlds in it, and there can never be enough Lup. Thank you, Hiccup—who is amazing—for the copious input.





	1. Year 1

The end of the world with coworkers felt decidedly strange. Uncomfortable, and not for the expected reasons. There was a day of isolation after that initial huddle to watch their universe vanish. Then there was a meeting.

Lup pushed her hair out of her eyes (but not behind her ears, no reason to scale those heights just for an annoying lock) and said, “So, that was… shitty. To understate it dramatically.”

“Yeah,” Magnus said softly. It was perhaps the first time in the six months they’d been working together that Lup hadn’t seen him crack a smile at her. She knew when she was being flirted with, she’d taken it in with a smirk and given nothing back because, hello, she had boundaries and she knew workplace relationships were the fastest way to get kicked to the curb. He wasn’t flirting anymore. 

Boundaries. They were gonna become walls if folks weren’t careful. Lup looked at Davenport but he was just staring at his Stone of Farspeech. It was dead and dark. Not even static came through. Wherever they were now, there were no magical lines in place that they could connect to.

Lup really didn’t like leading group projects but this team needed a nudge. They’d all lost their entire world. Lup had a bit of a leg up because her entire world was carefully braiding tidbits of her hair to hide how badly his hands were shaking.

“Hey, Starblasters,” she said, “you gotta work with me here. We’re strangers in a strange land, which. Okay, Lucretia, put some stars and trademark signs around that because that’s the title of the fuckin’ book you’re making out of this, I guarantee it.” She tossed her head to get Taako’s grubby fingers out of her ‘do and stood up. “We’re all we have, now. And our mission’s different. Captain, we can figure out what the new mission is but I have a pretty fuckin’ good idea and it’s ‘get the Light of Creation back.’ After that, I don’t know. Something has to come out of having it, though. It’s started something. Remember all that white light and shit? We’re planar scientists! We deal in figuring out whats, whys, and hows! But we have to get there, and we have to do it together, and we’re _going_ to fuckin’ do it.”

There was a silence, and it wasn’t kind. Lup wasn’t great at group projects, as she’d already known.

Then Barry looked up. His glasses were off, folded up and gripped in one hand, and his eyes were red. She could tell what was coming but he still had to say it, because someone had to say it. His mouth opened and she could see the strings of saliva where he’d pressed his mouth tight shut and swallowed the sorrow until it was all just goo. He said, “I miss my mom. And my brothers and sister.”

“Fuck,” Magnus said, and pressed a hand to his mouth, starting to tear up. “Oh god, my grandpa, and…” but he couldn’t go on around a sob that shook his entire body for a second, rocking him in his seat. Captain Davenport gently lowered his forehead to touch the dead Stone of Farspeech. Merle was silent and still, leaking tears into his beard. Lucretia’s hands were folded tightly in her lap as she said, “My parents were there.”

Lup looked down at Taako and felt profoundly lucky. He was looking up at her with what was probably her own expression. He gripped her hand tightly for a second.

“Sorry, dudes,” Taako said. It was the wrong thing to say, worse than what she’d said, but that’s what he did for her. When she fucked it up, he stood right there with her and fucked it up too. Fucked up worse, if he could manage it. She’d never asked if it was deliberate or if it was something they had in their genetics.

“Take a moment,” Lup said. her voice cracked on the first syllable but she gained strength as she added, “Hell, take a couple days. But we do have to, like, get cracking on figuring out what the fuck is going on. Captain, you’re the only one who can drive this fucker. Lucretia, we need a record now more than ever. Magnus, you gotta keep us safe out here cuz we got no backup. The rest of us… I mean, shit, where even are we? What happened? Everything…”

“It will wait,” Captain Davenport said sharply. “It will… It has to wait. Just for a little bit.”

“How long?” Taako said. “Cuz you can bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow’s gonna have that… _thing_ on the horizon. Or, if not tomorrow, the next day. It’s looming, homie.”

“We don’t know where the Light of Creation is,” Lup added. “That vanished with the, the thingy. But not into the thingy, I don’t think. It came with us. So it’s somewhere around here? Wherever we are.”

“Yeah, probably,” Taako said. “Hey, Dav, can we ping it or something?”

“No,” Captain Davenport said. He was looking up, though. Nagging was working; the twins were very good at it. Captain Davenport let the useless Stone of Farspeech fall to the floor and rested his hands on the table. “We do need to find it though, you’re right. Bluejeans, can you help with navigations?”

“I can try,” Barry said. He scrubbed at his eyes and repeated, “I can try,” in a more steady tone.

The captain nodded and turned to Lucretia. “You will need to chronicle what happens here. We’re somewhere completely unknown and we need to start trying to figure things out _fast_. Can you do that?”

Lucretia drew in a slow breath and nodded.

Lup nodded approvingly. “Cool. Uh. Merle, you come with me and Taako to check supplies. We—“

“We’re family now,” Magnus said suddenly. “You gotta say please and shit.”

Lup only noticed Taako flinching because she was looking for it out of the corner of her eye. She knew he’d seen her ears twitch too. They both did not look at each other. Everyone looked at Magnus instead.

“We are scientists and coworkers first,” the captain said, which loosened something in Lup’s chest even as her stomach did a slow flip. Captain Davenport was looking at Magnus with compassion but no mercy. “We have a job. It just got a lot harder. We need to work together, no one will argue that, but we have to _work_. Our command hierarchy on this ship remains the same. I will be acting as mission leader with input from Highchurch, Bluejeans, and anyone else who has relevant knowledge. We don’t have proper channels for supplies or decision-making apart from each other, though. Speak up if you have something to say. Let me know what’s going on. I have the ultimate authority and I do expect to command your attention in a crisis but I want you all to feel included in this process as we figure out what this process is. Stay safe, and keep each other safe out here, wherever ‘here’ ends up being. All right?”

Magnus wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. He didn’t meet anyone’s eye.

“Magnus,” Merle said, “kid, we gotta keep it strictly business. For now, at least.”

Lup darted a look at Taako, then peeked around the circle to see who would meet her eye. Barry was looking around as well and when she met his gaze, she mouthed, _Hug him_. She quirked her eyebrows at Magnus, trying to point with her face without moving her head.

She watched the dawning comprehension behind Barry’s glasses and watched him swallow nervously, then put an arm around Magnus.

Magnus flinched, then sighed. “Whatever, man. Cap’nport, I mean.”

Barry patted his shoulder a few more times, shooting Lup a desperate look. Merle rested a hand on Magnus’ leg, which made it less weird in a physical-contact sense but definitely more weird in a ‘everyone get a hand on the biggest human, okay, BREAK’ sense.

“Take some time,” Davenport said quietly. “We all need some time right now. Take it. Meeting tomorrow morning at oh-nine-hundred. Mr. Taako and Ms. Lup, can you be in charge of breakfast?”

“You got it,” Lup said. “Twins on the case. Um.”

Taako said, “Hey, I call bathroom shower for crying. Magnus, you can use our room.”

“I don’t _cry_ ,” Magnus said, still wiping the last tears from his eyes and sideburns. 

“Dude, now’s the best time ever to cry. Fucking go for it. I’ll be taking the world’s longest shower. Lup, I’ll need you to read to me so I don’t get bored. You gotta stay outside to preserve my manliness, though.”

“No long showers while we’re in space, Mr. Taako,” Davenport said, rubbing his forehead. Lup could see a bit of a smile tucked just behind his wrist, though, and he didn’t sound nearly as angry as he probably should. “We’re rationing supplies.”

Taako groaned dramatically but he was still moving out the door. Lup followed him, sticking her tongue out at Davenport but also waggling her fingers in a farewell. 

“Thanks,” she said to Taako.

He waved a hand casually but she saw him flex his fingers when his arm dropped to his side. “You felt it.”

“Think they’ll cope?”

Taako nodded once. He was so easy to read, especially when he was lying. He compensated by lying most of the time, but Lup always knew when he was scared shitless and keeping it quiet. She let him be.

Then she realized where they were on the ship and barked out a laugh. “You were serious about hanging out in the bathroom?”

“Well, yeah, babe, I wanna hear your dulcet tones skating around the syllables of Uncle Elfie’s Bathroom Reader or whatever the IPRE thinks elves read. Thought elves read, fuck. _Fuck_.”

Lup grabbed him as he stumbled into the wall. They sank down together and she rested her cheek on his hair. She knew he hated unexpected change. Their lives had been all about unexpected change up until they were almost in their fifties. Studying magic was supposed to be a change for stability. Getting into the IPRE and going on a 3-month mission with some of the best, brightest, and (in Magnus’ case) buffest was supposed to be a stable gig.

“Best laid plans of nerds and elves, huh?” Lup murmured. Taako snorted into the collar of her painfully red jacket.


	2. Years 2-7

Those early couple years, as they realized their survival was a fluke and a gift and a curse, they threw themselves into the work of understanding the worlds they had been thrust into. All the worlds felt gloomy; not a single one had a binary solar system and the days were dark, even on clear days. Lup got used to it eventually. It was mostly just a major bummer to not get to wear her amazing mirrored sunglasses more often. 

Taako and Lup stuck close to each other. Technically, everyone except Davenport had a bunk buddy. Merle and Barry were together because, as Taako said, “You’re old and old-adjacent.” Lup and Lucretia shared because Lup had insisted girls stick together—as much as she loved Taako, she had thought three months without him would be a nice little break. It was going to be longer than three months, but Lucretia kept her side of the room clean and she was so, so quiet, and it was honestly kind of a nice long break from Taako’s snacking sounds and night terrors (mostly gone, thank you Calm Emotion for readjusting neural pathways) and those stretches where he only wanted to make new things but not put anything away. There was no way Lucretia would be comfortable sharing a room with anyone else, either. Truly, the girls had to stick together. 

This all left Taako and Magnus to bunk together, which Taako hated (“He smells like a locker room all the time and he eats cereal out of the box with his hands, Lup, I’m in hell”) and Magnus did not care about. The twins would freely kick Magnus out, though, or take advantage of Lucretia’s insomniac nights and long hours of transcription to camp out in each other’s rooms, switching between whoever had the cleanest bed at the time. Their bunks filled up with soft things, jewel-colored shawls and blindingly garish blankets that Taako transmuted from whatever could be persuaded to appear different. All the junk might have felt cluttered but Lup loved the nest-like feeling it created.

The junk got a bit too much around the sixth cycle, though, even Taako had to admit it. So, as everyone in the crew was officially chilling in the ‘good friends’ zone, the twins built a pillow fort in the common meeting area. Taako made four kinds of popcorn. Lup made hot chocolate. 

They worked in silence, which wasn’t their usual, but Lup was pretty sure they were both thinking too hard about what it would be like to live with these people year after year. Lup couldn’t remember spending an entire year anywhere before she and Taako joined the IPRE. All their magic courses had been via correspondence, all their funds had been liquid assets, all their shoes had holes in them from walking mile after mile. Even after they’d enrolled in the IPRE’s pipeline college, which had residency requirements, they’d moved every new semester, chasing cheap rents and parties and a decent fucking kitchenette. Now they’d lived with the same folks for six years.

Folks joined them in the pillow fort. Merle set up in a corner with one of his massive, hand-carved pipes and asked if he was allowed to hotbox (he wasn’t). Magnus stumbled in from a post-workout shower, saw all the soft things to rest on, and moaned with joy before collapsing face first on the nearest heap of cushions. Barry settled down with a pile of books. He forgot to take his glasses off before falling asleep so Taako and Lup both doodled on him. Lucretia drifted in for popcorn and to listen to the long, elaborate stories Lup kept trying to tell about her college escapades, with frequent interruptions from Taako.

_“…so they were chasing me and I had the combat boots that night and Taako had the platforms—“_  
_“Asshole, I can run in platforms! Don’t doubt my powers!”_  
_“Yeah, I turn an ankle super easy but he can fuckin’ book it in heels, I’ll give him that. But my man, we were on cobblestones.”_  
_“Yeah, she had legit fears about that one.”_  
_“Exactly, shut up. So we’re running, and Taako’s like ‘weh run faster’ and I’m like ‘hold up, we have magic powers.’ So I try to at least throw some Prestidigitation at them but—“_  
_“A fucking cantrip she chucks at them.”_  
_“Oh, you think I should burn a spell slot on drunk douchebags now?”_  
_“I think maybe don’t hoard them all up. What’s one Magic Missile gonna take away?”_  
_“I didn’t want the police getting called because I put a fucking hole in a regular at Nasty Jack’s! Now let me tell the fuckin’ story!”_

It was a decent party. Lup could remember most of it but Merle probably didn’t. That dwarf seemed to have infinite party strength, which was incredible for a guy who looked so old and who complained so much. Barry slept through the acapella karaoke and the drinking games and a fairly obscene round of Simon Says. A cuddlepuddle slowly built until it was just Lup and Lucretia still awake. Lucretia had her eyes closed but Lup had watched enough humans sleep over the years to know when someone was faking.

“Yo,” Lup hissed.

Lucretia cracked an eye. “Yes?”

“You straightedge?”

“I— Sort of?” She waggled her mug of wine like it was evidence of debauchery. The wine sloshed.

“It’s cool if you are, girl, I don’t care. Just wanted to make sure the party’s your speed too.”

Lucretia looked around at all their sleeping… well, coworkers, but that was changing, even if Davenport was fighting it. He’d taken one look at their party and returned to his room, but at least he hadn’t shut it down.

Lucretia said, “I think this party is becoming more my speed.”

Lup smothered her giggles in Taako’s shoulder, then popped back up to say, “We can do a poetry reading next time. I’m sure folks have hidden talents.”

It was Lucretia’s turn to giggle, and Lup grinned like a fool over how sweet that sound was. Lucretia was just a kid but it felt like a victory to get her to act like one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have quite a few of these stored up! I'm keeping it chronological and slotting these into the story mostly around the actual story, though I have one that's in the canon. I hope you enjoy! They get more alien after this one, I just wanted to write friendly bonding pillow forts early on in their progress from coworkers to friends to family.


	3. Year 11

Taako blinked at Barry, then glanced at the Guardian looming before the gates of the city. “So we have to Two Truths and a Lie to get through?”

Lup pressed her hands over her eyes. “You have to be kidding.”

“What’s Two Truths and a Lie?” Barry asked.

Lup and Taako gave him matching looks of horror. Lup said, “Barold, have you never been to a slumber party?”

He blushed and didn’t answer.

“Dude fell asleep right at the beginning of that last big crew sleepover we had, the one before Maggie died to the ’shrooms?” Taako reminded her. “Okay, but Barry, do we all have to hear the truths and lie? This is important. I have many truths to impart.”

Barry turned and held out his arms to simulate the sweep of antennae, then delivered a series of clicks and slick hisses from between his teeth. Team Science, as the twins and Barry called themselves, had finally surrendered and now only one of them had to learn the local language with any degree of fluency. Lucretia had drawn up a helpful linguistic rotation chart that Taako then sabotaged, so it was really just Lup and Barry trading linguistic duties. 

This particular plane’s residents had been difficult to develop a back-and-forth with, though they were polite and not at all violent. Entirely developed for a vegetarian life, the mantis-like residents were seven feet tall, spindly enough that even Lucretia could probably punch a hole in one, and communicated all social graces through scent, which had been super helpful in establishing friendly relations; the IPRE’s peaceful intent was broadcast by their very presence. Barry still had to pick up the vocal and partially physical language, though, spoken through mandibles and with antennae movements. It looked hilarious on someone without antennae. Lup and Taako still snickered as he flapped like a signal flagger.

Barry gave them both a glare when he finished his translation. “Jerks,” he muttered.

The Guardian turned its smooth, frozen face with its several compound eyes to Taako and nodded. Their answers had to be audible to everyone.

Taako winced. “Well, shit. How are we going to keep this workplace appropriate?”

“Merle’s not here,” Lup pointed out.

“Yeah, fair enough. Ah, shit. Hey, um, Guardian, can my sister and I collab on this one? We’re basically the same person.”

Lup punched him, and not gently. “I’ll go first if that’s cool. So, they want information about us?”

“They’re calibrating,” Barry said. “It’s like taking a polygraph, but with scents. We’re already super different from them, so they want to know when we’re lying. What we smell like when we lie, I mean. It would definitely help with negotiations. This is a trust thing and they just want to know us at baseline and then when we’re not telling the complete truth. Keep it simple, maybe?”

“Sure. Okay.” Lup stepped up and cleared her throat. “I haven’t read any of Lucretia’s books. Taako stole my favorite shirt, the one with the sexy cutouts, and thinks I don’t know that he accidentally got bacon grease all over it and threw it away instead of washing it. I want to go home.”

The antennae of the Guardian hovered on either side of her, twitching gently just above her shoulders. She waited, not flinching, not tensing even though she definitely wanted to be holding her wand right now. This was important.

A series of clicks came from the Guardian.

“Oh, shit,” Barry said. “Taako, we’re supposed to guess.”

“What?”

“It’s part of the calibrating. It measures our reactions, too, since we’re going to be next up.”

Lup turned to give the boys a wicked grin.

Taako glared. “Dammit. She just wants to make me say it. Barry, you wanna guess?”

“Uh, I—“

“Do you have to get it right first time?” Lup said. “Cuz Taako may be able to field this one better, if there’s a penalty.”

Barry blinked at her. He took a weirdly uneven breath, then said, “The lie is that you want to go home.”

Lup’s eyebrows shot up. “Got it in one. Nice.”

“I’ll go,” Taako sang as Lup walked back to stand with Barry. “All right, ready?”

“Was it because I stuck to the order?” Lup asked out of the corner of her mouth. “You don’t have to go two truths and then the lie.”

Barry gave her a sharp look. “No, it wasn’t that.”

“I can rap the Nicki verse of ‘Monster’ and not miss a beat,” Taako said loudly. “I hate fishing. The first nails I painted were my sister’s.”

Lup smirked. When she looked at Barry, he looked lost, so she called, “You fuckin’ love fishing.” To Barry, she added, “Cheapest way to get a protein, but the bones are a bitch.”

“You’re right, but you’re cheating because we’re basically the same person. Means I have to try and guess Barold, too,” Taako said, “which is unfair to the max.”

“I don’t know what ‘Monster’ is,” Barry admitted as he passed Taako. He flinched when Taako shrieked in outrage.

“Chill, Taako,” Lup said. “We can educate the guy later.”

“He’s beyond saving, as far as I’m concerned.”

Barry faced the Guardian and said, “Um. I’m afraid of the dark. I like yogurt. I flunked my dissertation.”

Lup frowned, and when she looked at Taako she found him looking back with a furrowed brow as well. She held up three hesitant fingers, then dropped to two, then dropped her hand altogether and shrugged.

A light sparked in Taako’s eyes and he grinned. “My dude, you shit your brains out every time it’s Merle’s mac-n-cheese night, no way you can have dairy. You don’t like yogurt.”

Barry grinned at the twins and waved them up. “Good call, Taako.” The Guardian backed away, antennae quivering furiously, then skittered up the wall and over the other side.

“You flunked?” Lup said, hearing the delight in her voice and the wonder; she’d managed to hide the worry.

Barry shrugged.

“You’re afraid of the dark?” Taako said.

Barry shrugged again. “The Guardian’s gonna, uh, let us in. They just have to hit a few levers first.”

“He doesn’t know,” Lup said to Taako’s furiously frustrated look. “He never had a slumber party, remember?” She wrapped an arm around Barry’s shoulders. “Listen, how this game goes is it elicits conversation. So. Spill some of those tasty Barry-fact beans, please.”

“Uh, my sister shut me in the closet when I was seven and couldn’t figure out how to get it open again cuz she was four, so I was kinda freaking out and she was also—“

“No, the dissertation one,” Lup said.

Barry inched his glasses up his nose. “I picked a controversial topic?”

Lup grinned. Barry’s eyes widened.

“Oh, shit,” Taako said. “Lup, you’re gonna have to take it down a notch, that smile’s on the creepy spectrum for sure.”

“Do tell,” Lup purred. “I love a good controversy.”

Barry swallowed hard, a blush starting to creep up his neck like a rash. “It’s, it’s, uh, fuck. I had a necromancy minor.”

“Oh.” Lup and Taako exchanged another look and Lup added, “That’s fine, by the way, I assume you didn’t raise the dead or anything.”

“No,” Barry said quickly. “And that’s not dissertation-worthy, anyway. That’s, like, fieldwork? But bad and amoral. No, I was— I did my dissertation on the theory if imprints. After death? Like ghosts and haunted skeletons and, well, liches.”

“Oh.”

The gates to the city creaked open. Lup spent the rest of that (successful, hell yeah) cycle watching Barry and wondering if he had a spare copy of his dissertation, because what did that nerd have to say about liches?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know if you google 'lich' to figure out if it is spelled with a 't' or not and then you look at the images, you will see a series of spooky skull sorcerers interspersed with pictures of lychee/litchi/liche/lichee fruits? I could not stop giggling.


	4. Year 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A strange running theme throughout my many fanfic works: extremely heartfelt bonding moments combined with a hinted-at-but-never-explicit pornography contest.

“Maggie, I’m missing the last volume of that, mm, particularly zesty novel series with the tears-for-lube line.”

Magnus looked up from the post-workout toasted granola with milk he was steadily consuming. With a spoon, not his hands this time—they’d house-trained him. “That exists?”

“Well, the plane doesn’t anymore,” Lup said, leaning against the table and attempting to loom over the one person on the ship who was her height. It helped that he was sitting and she was wearing heels. They were also, thank god, not on the ship. The Light had practically dropped in their lap in those first few days so they were just killing time here, and it was delicious. The world was diverse enough (elves, humans, and dwarves, oh my!) that they’d all been able to get jobs to afford a house on the edge of a little town, and they were taking advantage of all this lovely meadowland. Taako, Merle, and Barry were on a picnic adventure and Lup was here, weaving a twisted web to make her own entertainment.

Magnus’ honest, gullible brow crunched up with thought. “Which plane was this porny one?”

“The Habitrail.”

“Oh, that was a fun time. Merle loved it there. He started that greenhouse, remember?” Magnus frowned into his cereal.

Lup had a goal, and the mourning was ruining it. “Magnus, I remember. And I want to remember _very specific_ bad sex details right now, if you’re getting my drift.”

“What about me screams ‘big reader,’ exactly?” Magnus said. 

“Listen, I could Sherlock Holmes your ass right now but I’d rather go spend some quality time with Emphanasia and the three to five dudes she ends up with, depending on how you interpret the badly-spelled names and badly-described intimacy, okay?”

“This book is sounding worse and worse, jeez. Definitely won’t read it if I see it. Who in the Habitrail world wrote it?”

Lup bent down and rested her elbows on the table, steepling her fingers. “You’re on three strikes right now. Thrice I have asked you. Fucking give. Me. The goods.”

Magnus held up his hands helplessly. “I don’t know, Lup! I didn’t take it!”

“Oh, for real?” Lup straightened up, feeling the delighted fizz of a plan coming together. “Fine. I guess we’ll have to settle this with a contest.”

“What? What contest? I’m in!” Magnus started shoveling in granola as he struggled to stand.

“Bad sex erotica based on the details of the book that you know. I will select an impartial judge—“

“Anyone who isn’t Taako,” Magnus said, though it was mostly vowels as he gnashed his granola furiously.

“Yes. Anyone who isn’t Taako. He’s busy being pastoral and shit, anyway. But the stories will be judged on zest and sex appeal.”

“What about length?”

Lup paused and watched Magnus attempt a wink. “No.”

“Aw.”

“That was a fun penis joke you did there, though. Smiley face sticker for you. Shall we summon Lucretia?” 

“Yes! Perfect judge, hell yeah.”

Lup rushed to Lucretia’s room and then, when Lucretia wasn’t there, to Davenport’s room. Lucretia was attempting to recreate, from the combined memory of herself and the captain, the schematics for the _Starblaster_. It was her project for this cycle and an important step to ship preservation, since nothing on the ship except the people and their base outfits seemed to survive the test of time and wear and tear. Knowing what goes where and what parts were needed would keep the _Starblaster_ going for as long as they needed, which… was an avenue Lup avoided thinking about. They were already 15 cycles in, how much longer could this last?

Lucretia was summoned, Davenport insisted he wanted no part in it, and they spread out on the sagging wrap-around porch, all four of them. Davenport had a glass of iced tea that turned to watery tea as he slipped gently into a nap. Lucretia had a stack of notebooks and her sketchpad. Magnus scooted out of sight around the corner, throwing Lup suspicious looks as he went. Lup flopped down on her stomach, tucked a few pillows in key places, and considered where to begin. An eerie silence came over the IPRE’s house.

Even the silence sounded different here. There was a shush of grasses, a susurrus in the trees Merle was coaxing to nauseatingly lofty heights, a few bug noises. The day was hot. Lup stuffed the end of her shirt up under her bra to soak up sweat and tried to keep from smudging her words as she wrote. Magnus was whispering furiously to himself on the other side of the house, just out of her range of hearing. Lucretia had claimed the porch swing and was humming something to herself as she sketched.

And then it all faded away, and Lup was writing some zesty bullshit and giggling when the nastiest wordplay popped into her mind. Her handwriting got looser and she started shortening names to save time and paper. 

“Time’s up,” Lucretia said, crouching by Lup’s head. “The boys’ll be back from their picnic soon and my butt fell asleep.”

“Go get Magnus first,” Lup said, “I gotta… one more sentence…”

Lucretia sighed, but in amusement. “Finish it off, Lup. I’ll get him.”

“That’s what she said,” Lup muttered. She scraped the sweaty hairs at the back of her neck up and away. “Sorry, low fruit and all that.”

“For that, you’re done,” Lucretia said, and swept Lup’s stack of pages up into her arms.

“No!” Lup wailed, but with the heavy drama that signaled she was joking. She clutched at Lucretia’s ankles. “One more pillow talk moment!”

Lucretia threw her head back and cackled.

“Get ready to be turned the fuck on!” Magnus roared, waving a wad of papers as he barreled around the corner of the house. He presented his erotica with both hands and Lucretia took it with an aloof calm that oozed such sarcasm, Lup shivered.

“I will get back to you at dinner and the winner will be announced,” Lucretia said. She swept off to her room.

“Shit, what do we do until then?” Lup asked.

Magnus shrugged. “Push ups?”

“Nah.” Lup held up a hand and Magnus pulled her to her feet. “Want to walk into town and get meal supplies?”

“Yeah, okay. I can do bicep curls with the bags, right?”

They walked barefoot down the dusty track that took them towards the little village of Pwene. Lup tried to teach Magnus a dirty song in Elvish; he wasn’t bad. The shops were sleepy in the heat and everyone here spoke Common, so transactions were quick. Their shadows lengthened before them as they trudged back to the house. 

In a moment of companionable silence, Lup realized she hadn’t thought of Taako in almost two hours. She hadn’t wondered if he’d be okay. She had to sit down for a minute. Her bag thumped in the dust beside her, she had to close her eyes and just breathe. Time passed, measured in how much air she could get past the weight pressing down on her ribs.

When she looked up, Magnus was watching her solemnly. 

“Sorry, Mags,” she said.

He shrugged. “It happens. What was it?”

“I’m…” Lup swallowed hard.

Magnus sat next to her, but not too close. “Does it help you to say it?”

“Yeah, my dude, just give me a fucking second.” She looked at her hands. She made them into fists. “I’m not worried about Taako, here.”

“Oh.” 

She saw that Magnus’ chin was twitching. “What is it, big guy?”

“I just… I get it. I feel safe here, too.”

Lup gave him a crooked smile that felt sad and heavy on her face. “Listen, we’ll find it. We have another whole half a year here. We can protect it.”

“Yeah, I know.” Magnus was flat-out crying now, and Lup felt compelled to put an arm around him and give him a few pats. He hiccuped and gasped and finally said, “I wanna stay.”

“Ahhh, bud, we can’t,” Lup said. “More planes to save, more ass to kick. The biggest ass, really. Gotta locate the ass on that thing and then kick it.”

Magnus gave her a wet smile. It slipped from his face after a moment. “I’m forty-two now. Mentally, I mean.”

“Still a baby to me,” Lup said.

“Yeah, I know, elf. But man, Lup, I really like this one.” He waved a hand around at the heat and the soft dirt track and the setting sun throwing gold light against the grasses.

“Yep,” Lup said. 

She remembered, years ago, when he’d given her an appreciative up-down on the IPRE quad and she’d met his gaze and smirked until he blushed. Now, she rested her head against his. “More ass to kick,” she repeated. “Don’t think about it ending, okay? Team _Starblaster_ for the win.”

“Yeah,” Magnus said. She felt his shoulders square up, she was so close to him. One of his big, sweaty hands covered hers for a moment.

She turned her head to whisper in his ear, “Race you back.”

Lup was up and running with her one tote bag of grocery goodies slung over her shoulder before he could do more than say, “What?”

“We’ve got some steamy porn waiting for us!” she yelled back over her shoulder. “Race you to it!”

She heard him give a big, gooey sniff and then yell in wordless betrayal as she sprinted up the track, panting, losing herself in just this one moment, please, one moment after the next was all she could ask for but couldn’t there be more moments like this one? 

Taako was wading through the grass in the distance, she could see his fucking stupid big hat he was using to prevent sunburns, and she whooped his name like she hadn’t seen him in years. She saw him turn, take a few steps towards her, then stop and wait. Her boy wouldn’t run if he knew she was coming for him. He was lazy as hell and he knew Lup would catch him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I miss summer so much, guys. I'm so cold. I just want to wear shorts.
> 
> Pwene, also called the Land of Punt, was a kingdom that the ancient Egyptians traded with and never wrote down the location of, so we have no idea where it was.


	5. Year 17 - Jaden Province

Barry was picking at his lower lip. It was bleeding but he hadn’t noticed. This world was super duper dry. Good for the robots to keep from rusting, bad for flesh people. Taako was working with Merle on home-made lotions but they hadn’t moved onto chapstick yet and the crew was suffering.

Barry was also falling asleep sitting up on a stool, which was just unsafe practices.

“Barry!” Lup yelled in his ear, because she was a true friend.

Barry fell off the stool. Lup suppressed her snickering because, again, true friend.

“Hi, Lup,” Barry said. He patted at his face for a moment, then squinted at her. “Do you know where my glasses are?

“Nope. I know where your bed is, though, and my dude, you need to go there.”

Barry gave her a long stare, made owlish by how naked his face looked without glasses. “There’s, I can’t, I have so much to do!”

“On what?”

He gave her a grin that was all teeth and worry. “Um.”

“Barry! You’re not doing necromancy on no sleep, are you?”

“I’m… I mean, no, but like. I mean.”

Lup shook her head sadly. “You have such a raging hard-on for the robots, huh?”

Even five cycles ago, he would have blushed, but everyone on the crew was slowly growing immune to the foul charms of the twins. Barry just sighed and turned back to the robot he had been studying until he zoned out too hard.

Lup wasn’t one to give up on a dirty joke if it might pay off, and Barry was a pretty decent payoff most of the time. She said, “This isn’t going to end up like a fetish, right? Like, I don’t have to start making a lot of noise before I come into the lab? Don’t have to tread carefully the way I’m sure you do around Merle and his flora?”

Barry winced and Lup settled back with a satisfied sigh; nastiness had finally landed. Goal achieved.

“No,” he said, and he sounded tired. He definitely was tired. 

“Hey, listen, why are you still in here scoping this robot when you clearly need to take a human-level sleep?” Lup asked.

“Because this is… This is something that we were starting to attempt back at the IPRE, in the necromancy department,” Barry said. He waved a hand at the robot, who waved back and giggled to itself. “These guys are still people. They were living, breathing, flesh-and-blood people but they’re still people now because their souls are… saved. And not the way Merle tries to do it, but saved as in stasis.”

Lup could feel her ears perking up. The necromancy was all right, not really her jam, but Barry was still staring at the robot and had clearly gone into an intense mental fugue state. Lup put a hand on his shoulder and said to the robot, “You can head out for now, babe. This guy needs sleep. Do you remember what sleep is? Do you still sleep? Never mind, don’t bother answering that, it’d probably break our Barold here. Shoo.”

The robot hopped off the table, landing with some very coordinated but in-need-of-oil joint telescoping. It waved at Barry and Lup, then creaked its way out the door. 

“Shit,” Barry said, twitching under Lup’s hand. “Wait, where’d she go? I wasn’t listening.”

“Didn’t tell me,” Lup said. “I can’t believe you’re still trying to work on these guys. Remember that one that kept shocking you and laughing about it? The fuck was up with that?”

“Her name was Penny. Is Penny. Hey, you ever hear of the Raven Queen?”

“Can’t say I have, Barold.” Lup pulled him to his feet and started steering him out of the room by the back of his shirt and the bend in his elbow. She tucked the glasses she’d stolen from him into his front shirt pocket.

“She’s all about that natural order,” Barry said, oblivious. “Life and death, it’s a balance. And it’s a straight line. Stops at death. It’s not a cycle, you know? I mean, with trees maybe, but not if they _really_ die, like of disease or cutting down or whatever. What would she think of this place?”

“Dunno,” Lup said. “Personally, I don’t see a big benefit in speculating about what gods would or wouldn’t do.”

“They’re not moving on,” Barry said. “No one in this planar system’s died in… a while. The robots couldn’t tell me, or wouldn’t. The astral plane’s there for a reason. Gotta use it, you know?”

“Yep, sure,” Lup said, banging on the door to his and Merle’s room. 

“I’m busy!” Merle yelled.

“Godsdammit,” Lup grumbled, working furiously to shut her imagination off. “I’m in hell, this is hell.” She renewed her grip on Barry and tried to think. Magnus could sleep on the couch and Taako could stay over with Lup—wait, shit, Lucretia was finally sleeping, that wouldn’t work. Was it even nighttime for those crew members with circadian rhythms to maintain? 

Lup sighed and dropped her forehead onto Barry’s shoulder, defeated. “Why don’t we have enough space for seven people to co-habitate? We’re in fucking outer space.”

“It was a three-month mission, Lup,” Barry said. “Well. It was supposed to be.”

Lup pulled back enough to see he was looking at the wall with an empty gaze she’d seen before. Hell, she’d made that face before too. Existential horror couldn’t be kept at bay forever. They were seven wanderers without a home and any new interaction was on a deadline. No wonder Taako wouldn’t talk to anyone outside of the crew anymore. It was unhealthy as hell but who could judge? None of them had coping mechanisms besides keeping on keeping on. 

“I know, bubbeleh,” she said. She bumped her forehead against his and gave him a shake. “Let’s get you on the couch, huh?”

Barry smiled faintly but it vanished fast. He didn’t say anything. He swallowed hard and she saw the sheen on his eyeballs.

“You know,” she said, trying to sound thoughtful instead of worried, “I bet you could use someone who’s a certified motherfucking genius to read over your notes. How about _you_ catch forty winks—or maybe forty-five, go nuts, you’ve earned it—and _I’ll_ read your shit. I mean, research logs.”

Barry wiped at his eyes. “Yeah, that. That sounds real good, Lup.”

“Excellent.”

He winced. “You sound just like Taako when you get away with something.”

“Take that back,” she said, gasping at the offense.

“Make me,” he said. The yawn he stifled turned his voice even huskier for a moment, slowed it way down, softened the nervous edges.

Lup laughed a little too loud and gave him a shove. “Get walking, Barold. Then get powernapping. This cycle is fascinating and I for one and going to ensure you suffer through as much of it as I have to.”

She’d thought the crushes were done with, she reflected later. Barry’s notes were stacked in her lap and she was reading them with one part of her mind while another part was running in a circle screaming DON’T FUCK COWORKERS DON’T FUCK COWORKERS at the top of her lungs.

Lup was smart. She was smart in several ways and one of those ways was at relationships. She was the twin who talked to people. Even if they didn’t want her to, even if she said the wrong things, even if she made it worse, she at least tried. She could admit when she fucked up, too. She gave great hugs and decent advice (living for at least fifty years as a transient, as part of a hot-twin unit in a race that was fetishized, and as a transwoman had earned her a million-billion life lessons to dole out). Lup had confidence and what Taako called ‘panache,’ which meant she did better eyeliner than he did. All of these facts added up to her needing to fight horny and emotionally-horny folks off with a stick. She was used to being crushed-on. It felt nice, especially when it was harmless.

This, despite the fact that Barry was one of the most harmless people on the ship, did not feel harmless. This felt…

Once, back in what had probably been their 20s, there had been a forest fire. Lup had a healthy respect for hot things. She had a few burns on her arms and legs—hot cooking oil or a tipped candle or bumping a sizzling pan—and one on her shoulder. The one on her shoulder was from the forest fire and it was the biggest one by far. Hot embers and her extremely flammable shirt and too much adrenaline to realize until Taako had tackled her off the wagon and slapped at her furiously, screaming the entire time. 

He’d been yelling, standing over her, trying to keep an eye on the rapidly retreating caravan to make sure they weren’t left behind. The fire was behind him, just in the crowns of the trees—it hadn’t touched down yet. Some of the flames never would. The only way to go was up, sometimes. She was hurting, and the hurt was starting to spread, but for some reason she had only been able to pull big, awed, smoke-poisoned breaths into her lungs and blink her streaming eyes at the wonder of the world. Her brother, backlit, angry, not yet realizing he was crying. The smoke haze giving everything the quality of a dream.

That same forest fire feeling showed up around Barry every now and then and that was a bad sign. She’d gotten her worst scar out of that fire. It’d bubbled and seared for weeks. Lup hadn’t wanted the camp healer putting a hand on her and she and Taako couldn’t afford anything more, not when pickpocketing their coworkers would have gotten them killed. 

Lup was smart in several ways, and one of those ways was self-control. Taako had it too, for all he acted like he was driven by impulse. Her boy might say he did something for no reason, but you could bet he had at least three ways to profit off an action. Likewise, he wouldn’t do a damn thing if he knew it wouldn’t get him something. He’d lived the same life she had, just a few feet to the left of her, and he could smell trouble. He’d probably tell her the same thing she was telling herself: DON’T FUCK COWORKERS.

But were they just coworkers anymore?

Lup drew a detailed, veiny penis ejaculating all over Barry’s fifth hypothesis revision and drew a sad face in the path of the jizz. She scribbled, _hope u hav bttr ideas then this, Bar_ in the margin and flipped that page.

Later, she woke up to Taako’s hand on her arm in that careful touch that meant _move slowly, there’s something to be cautious about here_. She blinked a few times and looked up at him.

Taako’s eyebrows were raised and he was smirking. His gaze flicked to her lap.

Barry had done a 180 in his sleep and wound up face-down on her thighs. She’d been wearing Lucretia’s flannel jimjam pants because sometimes it was funny to wear old-people clothes from her very young-looking roommate. On these striped jammies, there was now a significant wet patch were Barry had drooled in his sleep.

Lup mouthed, _Shoot me_ and mimed her own death.

Taako huffed a laugh, then his smile twisted a little at the corner and his eyebrows drew together. This was a question.

She’d been yelling the right answer in her head for most of the night and so it was easy to shake her head. She refused to allow this to become a problem.

Taako nodded, but he didn’t look relieved. He drew in a deep breath, giving Lup time to cover her ears before he yelled, “Barold, you absolute frat bro, get your crusty face off my sweet, angelic sibling!”

Barry twitched awake and lurched sideways, slithering off the couch and onto the pile of papers Lup had made of his notes. He moaned.

“Yeah, Barold, I’m the cool twin, don’t go ruining my good will,” Lup said. “Or Luc’s pants. More than you already have, I mean.”

“Barold, you _nasty_ ,” Taako said. “Your human germs are all over her crotch. That’s a travesty. It’s like drooling on a temple.”

“I’m at least some kind of incredible cathedral,” Lup agreed. “I feel sullied.” She wiped away an imaginary tear, then remembered and dropped the drama from her voice. “Oh fuck, wait, Taako, he doesn’t have his glasses on. This is wasted on him.”

“Shit,” Taako said. “Dammit. We need a better audiences.”

“True. Let’s see if we can get Magnus in here, he’s got the enthusiasm for scene-work.”

“I bet Merle could choreograph a shaming dance.”

“I hate you all,” Barry groaned.

Lup and Taako laughed in unison. Lup blared and Taako twinkled but the laughs worked together, no denying it.

“You love us, Barold,” Taako said, because Lup couldn’t say it for them. “Don’t make us get Highchurch in here to prove it with his patented lie detector spell.”

“He was… busy last time we checked,” Barry said, and Lup and Taako screamed one perfect, united, disgusted note together.


	6. Year 23

It was an empty year. Not even an empty world, just empty space where a planet should have been. They popped up every now and then. The first one had been strange, full of silence and cabin fever and a lot of weird fights over nothing at all. It was hard, when a world had no life on it. It was harder when a world had never supported life, still couldn’t support life. Conjured food was fine and great in the twins’ capable hands but there was nothing to see. 

Merle hated it the most, Lup knew. He loved Pan and all Pan’s creations, especially plants (yikes). When there weren’t any plants to tend apart from the various clippings and crops he kept in his and Barry’s room, he got kind of withered. He stopped making as many jokes. He started moving his plants outside his room, carrying a _C. ruderalis_ under his arm or encouraging a bougainvillea to wrap itself around the ever-open common room door with whispers everyone tried to tune out.

Lup found him flopped over, one stubby finger stroking the soft surface of a chrysanthemum wilting in its little pot. He looked greasy instead of dirty and the living air plant flowers in his beard were washed out, duller than their usual rosy pink.

“Hey, Merle, why you pretending to be a rug?” Lup asked, squatting down beside him.

He sighed deeply. “You know, kid, I really hate it when we hit a world like this.”

“Oh, I know.”

“Do you?”

Lup shrugged. “Everyone’s on edge, my guy. Taako’s taking up macrame. Lucretia and Magnus are hanging out a ton, which usually means we’re going to have a group talent show soon. At least we got some time away from each other last cycle; I doubt we’d be this sane if we’d done this one right after the beach year. Even so, we’ve got the _shpilkes_. I don’t know if it’s the same for you.”

“It’s worse,” Merle said, and Lup rolled her eyes at that. He used his melodrama voice as he launched into a rant about the state of his faith, the power of a nitrogen-rich soil and a good spray of sunshine, the deep sorrow that came from wilted leaves. It was a quality ramble.

“Merle?”

“—when that rich soil is in your— Yeah?”

“We miss you, man.”

Merle turned over to face her, eyes wide. “You do?”

“Yep. We miss our shitty stoner uncle. We keep finding you moping places and it’s bringing us down and we wanna help.” Lup gave his shoulder a careful pat, trying not to acquire any of his sadness-stink on her. 

They did miss Merle. No one was equipped to deal with his sorrow, though, and that sucked. Dav and Taako and Barry got closed off when they were trapped, made their own entertainment and didn’t want to engage too much. Lucretia could go that route too, unless Magnus got to her and convinced her to do some dumb nonsense. He could always get Lup to do dumb shit with him, honestly. That was how they coped, though. No one except Merle was really a nurturer on the ship. Maybe Dav should have planned for that.

“Hey, Merle?”

His big, hazel eyes were watering pretty hard. He sniffed and said, “Y-yeah?”

“Could you, uh, show me how to repot shit?”

Merle pressed a hand over his mouth and blushed. 

Lup winced. “Oh, fuck. This isn’t a mating ritual for you, right? Tell me it isn’t. Lie to me, Merle, and make me believe it.”

“It’s not,” he said quickly. “I swear, it definitely isn’t a sexual thing at all. Nope. Not a sexual thing at all.”

Lup collapsed next to Merle. “This is a nightmare I’m having. Taako’s going to kick me awake any minute now.”

“I’m gonna have Cap’n’port write you up for workplace harassment,” Merle said. “You propositioned me and my delectable little green friends.”

“Why are you such a pervert?” Lup asked. She flipped to get a good look at the ceiling. Her robe twisted under her and she had to flop like a fish, arching away from the floor and huffing with effort to get the damn thing out from under her.

“I dunno,” Merle said. “I like what I like, is that so bad?”

Lup laughed. “Shit, no! There’s not enough joy in the world, Merle, you gotta find it where you can. I’m not gonna kinkshame you. At least, not without an audience. Or not if it drags you into a rut. Don’t doubt your bliss, my guy.”

“Audience?”

“You’ve seen me and Taako go off, you think we do that to be assholes?” Lup propped herself on an elbow so she could look down at Merle. “We do it cuz we’re fuckin’ hilarious. No one should take us seriously.”

Merle nodded slowly. “I guess I knew that.”

“Gotta make ‘em laugh,” Lup said. “It’s been thirty-plus cycles, you’d think you’d have figured out we twins are jokesters. Hey, would it be cool or bad to paint the ceiling something more interesting?”

“Both,” Merle said, “if we don’t ask permission first. But we’re rebels, right?”

“Yeah, true. I’m gonna get Taako to transmute me up some glowy stars or something. And some paint. Man, I love being a wizard.”

“Certainly seems cool as hell, Lup.”

Lup patted Merle a few more times on the shoulder. “Yeah, well. Cleric-ing seems… fun.”

Merle’s eyes crinkled up and he gave a happy sigh. “I tell ya, Lup, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Pan is great, Pan is good, and I sure do love me some nature.”

“Yeah, Merle, we _know_ ,” Lup said. “You could maybe stand to cool it a little. No one else gets their freak on so obviously.”

“That’s a damn lie, remember that guy with the, oh, the… Taako picked him up on the world that rained all the time, remember that? He had fins? And a mohawk, that’s the word, but it was a fin too.”

Lup sighed. “I didn’t want to remember that time _my brother_ got laid but yeah, Merle, I remember.”

“They were in the bathroom for so long, I thought Dav was gonna break down the door or somethin’. Almost flooded the place. Oh, and Lucretia with the folks on the ice planet! The ones who only had a sex drive and a gender once a month!”

“Yep, that sure was an experience we all got to have, six of us secondhand.”

“And Barry with whatshername, the one who looked like my Aunt Blarg! Or was that actually just a really good back massage? He was blushin’ pretty hard when he showed up to dinner but he didn’t invite her back and he seems like the kinda guy to call the morning after.”

Lup covered her face with her hands. “Merle, I know we’re a crew with urges, all right? I take it back. Fuck all the plants you want. Just let me keep my pure mind.”

“And you!” Merle laughed. “Maaaaan, I dunno how you think you’re keeping it quiet but you aren’t.”

“I have never fucked anyone on this spaceship, Merle.”

“Zone?” he threatened. “Don’t make me truth ya!”

“Burn a spell slot, old man, see if I care! My answer ain’t changing.”

“Maybe, but maybe you _want_ to fuck someone on this spaceship.”

Lup could see two routes through this minefield. The route of laughter was the route that she could see ending up with her talking about her current crush situation. The route of depression was the route that would end this; Merle was already just barely out of his maudlin pit, he could be pushed back in so easily.

She didn’t feel good about it but she said, “Merle, listen. You realize when we leave planes, we’re never gonna see these folks again, right?”

“I get it, I know. It’s been a while, I understand the whole system by now.”

“Mmhmm. So, and you know I’m never gonna go the route of ‘it’s not worth it to try if we’re just gonna leave,’ right?”

“Yeah, the robot world pretty much proved you think all life is precious, Lup.”

“Totally. But, listen, no reason to plow the field, so to speak, right? No reason to put down roots by going to town on some folks, right? I shouldn’t be using plant-based metaphors for this with you but let’s ignore that, shall we?”

“Oh.” Merle sat up. “You’ve been abstaining this long cuz it’s an emotional thing.”

“Exaaaactly,” Lup drawled, also sitting up.

“So why not just get it over with and fuck Barry?” Merle asked.

Lup smiled. Anyone but Taako would have to roll pretty high perception to know it was a mask. “I don’t think you understood any of what I just talked about, Merle. I’m gonna go get Magnus and Lucretia to come in here and heckle your crusty ass, okay?”

“What’d I say? What’d I get wrong?” Merle asked. “Everyone knows it. Hell, Taako gave him his blessing on that icky beach planet.”

“Taako what now?” Lup said.

“Shhhhit, that was s’posed to be a secret. Shit. Sorry, Lup.”

“Oh, don’t apologize to me, Merle, but do elaborate,” she said.

Merle waved his hands in a placating gesture. “Okay, so uh. Taako and Barry, they were swimming and then I guess Taako found out Barry’s got a crush on ya—“

“ _Everyone_ has a crush on one of us at some point,” Lup said. “It’s nothing new. Shut up. But also keep telling me what the fuck is up.”

“I mean, Taako basically just told Barry to go for it. The guy must’ve had it bad for Taako to give him the okay.”

Lup rested her head in her hands. “Merle, I hate all of you sometimes.”

“Even Taako?”

Lup peeked through her fingers enough to show she was glaring. Of course she was going to love Taako ‘till the end of time; that didn’t make any of this okay. “I gotta go bother a brother of mine about being a nosy parker, ‘scuse me. I meant what I said and all that, though. Come out of this funk a little and join up with Maggie and Lucretia. Don’t tell Davenport I said to do that, though.”

Merle chuckled. The air plants twining through his beard were starting to flush pinker. She decided this was a good sign.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _C. ruderalis_ is a type of marijuana plant. The _C._ stands for cannabis.
> 
> I'm really proud of remembering air plants exist and that Merle could feasibly have some growing in his beard because they don't need soil. I kill all plants I'm tasked with taking care of so this was a fun chapter to research.
> 
> The worlds Merle mentions where people got laid are, respectively, _The Shape of Water_ and _Left Hand of Darkness_ (rip Ursula K. Le Guin).


	7. Year 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol it's Valentine's Day, this is the most bummer chapter in the whole fic so far! Sorry, y'all. Here's where the tags take effect. Tangential mention of suicide and depression, major character death (but of course it won't last, these guys bounce back in all the ways and I'll take joy over angst any day).

Lup pinched her brother’s skin between thumb and forefinger, then let go and watched the little hillock of flesh slowly flatten back out. Not a good sign.

“Can you tell time by it?” Taako asked.

“No,” she said.

“Liar.” He wasn’t opening his eyes anymore and she knew it was because they were gummed together, stuck tight with dehydration and whatever they’d shot him full of before she could get to him.

“Try again?” she said. “Call me a liar once again, hmm? See what happens.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. He didn’t move otherwise. His throat convulsed once and his tongue slipped out to pat at his own cracked lower lip, then retreated.

“Please, Taako,” she said.

“Never, ever beg,” he said. It was the way he talked to himself, though, and Lup knew it wasn’t a reminder for her about being strong or whatever. Taako was slipping.

There was a voice that Taako used for her, and a series of voices he used to talk to everyone else, and then there was a voice he used for himself. The voice he used for himself was never funny. It wasn’t clever the way Taako was, it didn’t demand attention. It sounded dead to Lup. She didn’t hear it often. Mostly she overheard it when he thought he was alone because as much as Lup liked to be the first thing you noticed in the room, Taako was used to her presence enough that she could fade into the background.

She’d heard it when Merle died on the mushroom planet, decades ago. It had been in those sickening seconds before they switched planes, when the Hunger was chasing and there was nothing they would be able to do if it didn’t work this time. 

She’d heard Taako say, “Pointless” as he looked out the window of the ship. 

Now, in this desert, on her first day without water and Taako’s fourth, she said, “Taako?”

Even his hum sounded cracked and barren now.

“Please try.”

“It’s a waste, babe,” he said. “Shit still hasn’t left my system. It’s way more slow-acting than I had hoped too, jeezy creezy. Even if Merle was around this cycle, he couldn’t do shit.”

Lup blinked the film away from her eyes—crying in a desert was just the worst possible choice—and said again, “Please try.”

“Could you just not?” Taako said.

“No. I can’t ‘just not.’”

He sighed through his nose. “Can I get a little eye spit-shine first?”

“Of course,” she said. She licked her thumb a few times, building up a slick of saliva, and then gently wiped her thumb over his eyes—left first, then right. She’d been doing this whenever he wanted to see something. His eyes weren’t building enough of their own moisture anymore.

“You get your spell slots back yet?” he asked, blinking slowly.

“I leveled an army to find you, and that was less than six hours ago.”

“So you’re saying you _haven’t_ recovered any slots. Cool, cool.”

“You are such a butt.”

“Hey, Lulu?”

She gritted her teeth at the nickname but didn’t comment. “What?”

“I would suuuuper appreciate it if you just like. Let me get all comatose and shit? Like, I love you and I’ll see you soonish, ya dig?”

Lup breathed deeply, ignoring the momentary hitch in her lungs. “Taako, you know I hate that.”

“Taako’s not a big fan either.”

“So don’t.”

“Listen, you gotta get moving. I can’t. I’d rather you didn’t stick this one out and see my nasty end. Get walking. Dav’ll find you.”

“What’re you at, two?” she asked.

Taako blinked at her, pupils filling the entire span of his eyes. Darkvision would probably look creepy to anyone who wasn’t, you know, used to darkvision. He said, “Four.”

“What the fuck?” Lup said. “No way.”

“Why not? It’s a steady number. Square number, even. I’m no Bluejeans but I can math a little.”

“How’d you get four? Taako, I swear it’s only been twice.”

“Mm. Can you name them?”

“The drowning thing in that cave with the kelp shit that Merle tried to reason with and, um…” Lup thought hard. “I think I got us into but not out of a barfight.”

“Correctamundo.”

“So what’re the other two?”

Taako looked at her.

When he didn’t even make a move to respond, she said, “Taako, why don’t I know about the other two?”

Taako closed his eyes. “We don’t talk about dying much, do we? As a crew, I mean. You and Magnus brag about the good ones but we don’t talk about it much.”

“Yeah, cuz it’s fucking depressing.”

Taako’s mouth twisted. He swallowed. It made a clicking sound in the back of his throat. “Uh-huh. Makes folks depressed, the dying thing. That you do.”

Her heart went cold. She rested her fingertips on her brother’s. “Taako, don’t… do that anymore, okay?’

“No promises.”

She remembered cycles where Davenport had dragged Taako aside immediately after regeneration had happened. Magnus had been there to yell about how much he missed her, holy shit did she miss some good fights, but it had felt forced and strange. She’d assumed it was him trying to be cool about _Lup_ dying. He was a good distraction, though, she had to give him that.

“Taako, look at me. Please.”

“Never, ever beg,” he said, but this time it was for her. It was a dry, breaking, sing-song voice and it rattled her to her core.

He lingered a while past sunrise but they didn’t speak again. She kept a hand on him for as long as she could, like she could keep him here by never letting go. Eventually, though, she stepped out and began the slow, dim trek that would always take her home; it was only a matter of time. As Lup breathed desert dusk, she wished so hard that Taako was here to push her down a dune or two.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Year 28:

She reformed and took a step closer to her brother, hip-checking him. He blinked at her, a rapid flutter, and he looked so nervous and vulnerable, Lup had to give him a smile. It was like forgiveness. 

She didn’t forget, though. She was going to be more careful. Seriously. Death wasn't as chill as Merle made it seem. How the fuck had she ever forgotten that?


	8. Year 33

Navigating new-world racisms or sexisms or other prejudices was always a super fun experience for everyone, especially when only dwarves existed.

“I hate everything,” Lup said, three months into guarding the ship while Merle and Dav traversed tunnels that had never been designed for anyone over 5 feet tall. She had her feet in Magnus’ lap and she was using Barry as a backrest and she was being whiney and felt vaguely ashamed but unwilling to stop.

“That’s just because you’re the tallest,” Taako said. “Normally it gets you a status thing. Now we’re all just freaks of nature and you’re the freakiest.”

Lup stuck her tongue out at her brother. “Thanks.”

“Lup’s not taller than me,” Magnus said.

“My dude,” Taako sighed. It was an old, old argument and no one was going to win. Elf height fluctuated more than a human’s over the course of a day, so while Lup could start out looking Magnus in the eye, she’d end up trying to give herself extra lift on her tip-toes by sundown. Lucretia had explained it all to them several times, and even Merle had gotten down one of his old biology textbooks from his healing courses way, way back in divinity school to verify. It wasn’t an argument about facts, though. It was a stupid, harmless argument to have when tensions were high. The stakes were nothing. Complaining and arguing just for something to talk about was sometimes necessary.

“I want another beach planet,” Lup said. “This one sucks. Everything’s underground and I can’t go see it because dwarves yell at us whenever we do and Merle won’t give deets.”

“Ask Dav,” Barry suggested.

“Shut up, Barry,” Magnus said, but it a friendly way. Lup felt herself lift up and then drop back down as Barry heaved a resigned sigh. She resisted the urge to tip her head back and nuzzle into his laziness-stubble. He was a coworker, she kept reminding herself. Coworker, then friend, then… this. They had the work, and that was most important. And then being friends, because holy shit were they friends. Everyone on the _Starblaster_ had seen everyone else at their worst and at their best and at their most mediocre and if that wasn’t friendship, Lup didn’t know the meaning of the word. 

“Cap’n’port might be lying to us about how boring it is out there in the tunnels,” Taako suggested. 

“Oooh, I like this conspiracy,” Lup said. “Maybe they made him their king because he’s, like, the cleanest of their kind! The cleanest dude they’ve ever seen!”

“And the grumpiest,” Taako said.

“Yeah, King Grump’n’port!” Magnus laughed.

The twins giggled and then stopped at the same moment. 

“This is getting into racism territory,” Lup said.

“We really need to brush up on our workplace standards,” Taako said.

“Babe,” Lup said, “the day they make a kitty strong enough to ‘hang in there’ through all the shit we’ve been through? I’ll worry about my workplace standards. Barry, can you get all up in my neck bones? I got a crick that needs to go.”

“Gross,” Taako said. “I’m leaving, this is sexual harassment.”

“Jeez, I hope I’m not sexually harassing my _sibling_ ,” Lup said. “I need a backrub _stat_ , this is a medical emergency, and our healer is out. Barry, get on me with those magical mitts please.”

“Uh,” Barry said.

“Captain’s back,” Lucretia said, rising. Davenport strode in, arms wrapped tight around the Light.

There was a general relaxation even as the crew shifted to more formal positions. Davenport was still as straight-laced as they came. He appreciated some level of visible respect, at least for a few moments. Lup didn’t mind. She could get Barry to give her a shoulder-rub later. Everyone except Taako stood up and Barry gave an awkward half-salute.

“At ease,” Davenport said. His mustache was twitching with amusement. “Was I really gone that long? You all relearned some serious manners while I was out.”

“We missed you, Dad,” Taako drawled. 

Davenport winced a little. “Yeah, okay, tone it down.”

“You got the Light!” Magnus said, because it needed to be said. Hell, it needed to be celebrated!

“Woooo!” Lup flicked a few streamers of fire from her fingertips. “Light of Creation, here it is! Guess this dumb plane is saved!”

“And with a month to spare,” Davenport said. He carried it over to the pillar that had been designed to hold it for their journey, and he let it slip into the groove and rest, right where it belonged.

“Where’s Merle?” Lucretia said.

Davenport’s mustache twitched harder. He cleared his throat a few times, which was all the answer they needed. Lup thumped back down on the couch. Taako leaned against her leg, the nearest part of her that he could reach. Magnus’ hands clenched.

Davenport managed to say, “He, ah, Parlay’d. And we all know how that ends.”

“Dammit,” Magnus growled. “I hate when he just _leaves_.”

“The minute negotiations came together he started unbuttoning his shirt,” Davenport said.

“Yikes,” Taako said. Lup kicked him. When he looked up at her, she shook her head warningly; Magnus didn’t respond well to people making fun of Merle when he was gone from Parlay.

“When will he stop with it?” Barry asked, because Barry had no self-preservation and also got really skeezed by the whole process of Merle dying repeatedly with a puff of smoke. 

Davenport just sighed but Magnus started giving Barry the long, slow stare. It was a very quiet threat. Barry, thankfully, picked up on it and looked at the ground. Then he looked at Lup. She was surprised by that one; she wasn’t doing anything worth looking at, and suddenly his eyes were meeting hers. She gave him a kind of quirk-mouthed shrug and turned her full eyeball-attention to Davenport as he explained what he’d done to get the Light. Lucretia was taking notes.

“…contest of strength. Merle tried but I think he slipped a disc or something? Anyway, I couldn’t win but I could make it look like I did, and they don’t know much about illusion magic here…”

Taako’s fingertip tapped her kneecap. Lup ignored it, though she knew what it meant.

Taako was fully rooting for Barry; he’d told her several times. But he was the romantic, even though he always got so weird and sassy when he met a man he liked for more than two dates. His affection was caustic sometimes, and his choices didn’t have to be the same as hers. He couldn’t be trusted.

The entire _Starblaster_ crew, all that was left of the IPRE, had to get along. If her _thing_ with Barry fell apart, however tenuous and new it was, holy shit were they doomed. Lup didn’t handle breakups well and who knew what Barry would do. Wailing and teeth gnashing probably? Lup was a fucking goddess, how would he ever recover?

Taako started tapping out a rhythm on her shin. Davenport’s story was winding down. When she shot Taako the glare he was angling for, he raised one eyebrow and flicked a glance over his shoulder. 

Barry was still watching Lup. He twitched when she met his gaze, spinning to focus on Davenport. His cute little ears were bright red. They looked extremely nibble-able.

She heard Taako snicker and she kicked him again. Not talking about it was literally Lup’s least favorite thing ever but it had to be like this. She _knew_ it did. She could do casual. This could be casual, no matter how much she wanted to spend her time with Barry. Lup could absolutely keep things chill.


	9. Year 39

Lup had a cold. It was almost gone but it was also at the nastiest stage, when she was all runny and gooey. Even Taako refused to hang around his sick sister. Everyone else had gone out to find the brave new life on this weird, donut-shaped planet, leaving Lup behind. Poor, poor Lup.

Taako had set like 8 tupperwares of soup next to her and Lucretia had left her the good teapot and Magnus had brought her the fuzziest blanket and Barry had offered a footrub (which, hell yes she was gonna take advantage of that when she felt less like a nasty goo monster), but Lup was still in need of a good wallow.

Davenport had stayed behind with her. She shuffled out of her room, trailing a blanket and wrapped in a robe that could hold several pockets-worth of tissues. In a pathetic voice, she croaked, “Cap’n’port?”

No answer.

“Need a fuckin’ butler bell,” she told herself. She paused to lean against the wall of the _Starblaster_ for a moment, gathering her strength. From up ahead, there was a dull thump. Lup continued down the hall. 

Davenport’s room was in the very nose of the ship, in the same direction as the thump. Lup and Taako had installed weapons during their time in the robot world, with Magnus’ encouragement, and Barry had rewired the controls to a panel just outside his door. It was always a breathtakingly scary moment if you were looking at the panel because it looked almost exactly like an elevator’s call panel. It would just take one moment of absentmindedness for a big ol’ laser to launch from the _Starblaster_ ’s nose and into some innocents.

Lup tapped on the door gently. “Captain?”

Silence.

It was a breath-held kind of silence, though. Lup tapped again. “I’m gonna collapse dramatically out here if you don’t—“

Davenport’s door swished open. “Yes?” he said.

Lup stumbled back a step, though Davenport only came up to her hip. “Bad time?” was all she could think to ask.

Davenport took a sharp, deep breath in through his nose and then practically spat it out again. “Yes, Lup, it is.”

“Cuz of Merle? Or just a bad day?”

Davenport’s jaw worked silently. Lup watched him through the haze of illness, and was surprised by what she saw. 

“Why’re you so mad, sir?” she asked.

Davenport went still. “You haven’t called me ‘sir’ in… ever, Lup.”

“I did, once or twice. For shits and giggles.”

“So it’s been over three decades, at least.”

Lup nodded slowly. He was a gnome, and while his ears were closer in shape to her and Taako’s than Magnus and Lucretia and Barry’s, they were rounded out. All around, he was a round, cute little guy, like a kid wearing a mustache. His hands betrayed him. Hands showed age, Lup knew to watch out for that. His hands were callused (even if their bodies hadn’t reset each year, Lup got the feeling Dav would always have calluses) and veiny and strong. His hands weren’t fucking around. 

“Your knuckles are bleeding,” she said.

Davenport’s hands vanished behind his back. “Go back to bed, Lup.”

Lup slid down the doorframe of his room until she was sitting on the ground, legs curled under her. “Captain, what’s wrong?

Davenport glared at her, eye to eye. A muscle in his jaw twitched. She could hear his teeth creaking. 

“What is it?” she whispered. It was an old tactic, one she hated using, but it worked on a lot of guys—make feelings a secret that she could keep, if they trusted her with it.

It worked this time. Davenport sucked in another deep breath and said, “Doesn’t it ever get to you, Lup? What we’re doing? How little we know about why we’re doing it? I mean, even if we have new intel on it…”

Lup cocked her head to the side and said nothing.

Davenport let his arms drop to his sides. Lup took the hand that was closest to her and inspected it carefully, giving a gentle squeeze to each phalange.

“No breaks,” she said. “I used to do this for Taako and he’d do it for me. Hands are important, especially if you’re going to be a wizard.” She smiled at Davenport hazily.

“Why aren’t you angrier?” he said. “Everything we’ve gone through?”

Lup considered. “I am,” she said. “Very angry. I have to see people I love get hurt, my _family_. Taako—I’ve seen him die. I’ve died and left him. I’ve left all of you, at one point or another, and only you and Lucretia have gotten away clean after all this time. And Merle…” She took a moment to uncurl Davenport’s fingers from where he’d clenched them involuntarily. “He’s doing too much. One cycle after another without him? Fuckin’ sucks. And it scares me. And we don’t know _why_ , even. I mean, the _why_ is ridiculous. Some boardroom prick sweet-talked an entire plane into vore?”

“Gods, Lup,” Davenport muttered, and her giggle turned into a cough she needed to cover and catch with both hands. 

She Prestidigitated the surface-level germs away and reached for Davenport’s other hand to test its durability. “We’re surviving, Cap, and survival's not my style. I want to be kicking ass and taking names already.”

“Of course you do.”

“You do, too,” Lup said. “Listen, you still drive like a godsdamned maniac, every cycle. We all cried when we couldn’t save them, the folks from… Well, any of these fucking planes. It’s unfair and there’s no reason for it, you know? Of course I’m pissed. And I just started getting Barry to French like he means it, and it’s been over three decades since I got any action where the kissing had time to get good!”

Davenport winced. “Lup, that’s TMI.”

“Who told you about TMI?” Lup asked. Then, as Davenport answered, because she already knew the answer, she said, “Taako.”

“He said it’s standard slang,” Davenport muttered. 

“Well, it is, it’s just weird to hear you say it.” She let go of his hand and sniffed some mucus back into her nose. “You’re all good, there. Lucky you didn’t break anything. Kinda out of character, too, not that I’m gonna begrudge you some wall-punching. You’re so controlled, Cap.”

“It’s how I got this job,” Davenport said. “Top of your class doesn’t mean shit if you can’t stay cool in a crisis and, Lup, it’s been a crisis for this entire mission.”

“Oh.” Lup reached out and managed to rest a hand on his shoulder after the third try. She was so tired. This cold was sapping all her strength. She managed to say, “Want a hug?”

Davenport looked up at her. His mustache hid his mouth, Lup realized. It drew attention away from the pain in his eyes, or it would have if her ability to concentrate was working. Instead, she gave him a gentle tug and, when he leaned against her, she pressed one hand to the back of his head and one between his shoulder-blades, the same way she’d held her brother when the world was unfair and against them.

He wasn’t Taako; he didn’t mutter tangents into her collarbones, and he wasn’t as awkward about where to put his arms. Davenport just leaned against her and breathed. No tears. Perhaps he’d pushed them to the other side of this crisis. Maybe he’d find them again someday.

“We love you, boss,” Lup said.

The breath he sucked in was uneven but his voice was steady when he said, “At this point, Lup, we’re family.”

Lup smiled and rested her cheek on the top of his soft, curly head. “It’s real nice to hear you say that, Cap. We are. I’m glad you’ve given up on us being coworkers.”

“I’m still the boss,” he said. “I’m still responsible for all of you.” She felt a hand splay out on her ribcage—just one, almost in her tickle-zone but not quite. It rested there, feeling her heartbeat crash against it.

“I get it, Cap,” she said. “Can you make me tea? I'm hella sick.”

“Of course, Lup,” he said, and he did.


	10. Year 42

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is post-coital as all get out but no specific references to acts or bodies, I'm shy. Just awkward chats when you're both in love but too nervous to say it.

Lup felt a cautious hand sink into her hair. “Um.”

“Go for it, dude,” she said. “I condition.” This whole situation was fairly hilarious if she thought about it. Barry was still wearing 90% of his clothes (blue jeans were on, even if they weren’t zipped) and Lup had one sock and not much else. And yet he was being awkward about touching her _hair_ now.

“Uh, I can tell,” Barry said. He started running his fingers through, working at knots when he ran into them. “Used to do this for my sister.”

“Nat, right?”

“Yeah, Natalie.”

Lup yawned into Barry’s stomach and hummed. She curled up tighter. If she didn’t look at his face, this didn’t count. She was doing a lot of lying to herself during the course of this… _thing_. It was getting harder to lie, though.

“Can I braid it?”

Lup blinked. Her eyelashes scraped the soft, old fabric of Barry’s shirt. She was gripping her own wrist so hard, the tendons in her hand were creaking. She kept her voice light as she said, “Go for it, whatever floats your boat.”

“It doesn’t— Isn’t that a sex metaphor?” Barry asked. “‘Whatever floats your boat,’ I mean?”

“Probably.”

Barry hummed. It was a flat hum.

The energy in the room was getting weird, so Lup gave up on riding the afterglow and said, “Listen, remember the bug planet?”

Barry’s hands paused their work, then resumed the slow braiding process again. “Can you be more specific?”

Lup laughed into his gut. “Barry, it does fucking suck that we’ve been to more than one bug planet, right?”

He huffed a laugh, jostling her head. “Yeah, I guess it does.”

“The mantis bugs, I mean.”

“Oh, yeah, those guys. I remember.”

“Two Truths and a Lie.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Do you remember what you said?”

“…Yes? Some of it?”

“Do you have a copy of your dissertation I could read?” Lup asked.

Barry’s hands slowed down but did not stop the steady rhythm, the gentle pull. He was French braiding. Lup stared at his toes, then his knees, then the curve of his stomach that hid the denim fly she knew for a fact was undone. Probably needed to wash them now. 

He washed his regeneration-maintained bluejeans once a week and walked around in different pants for a few hours and it always threw her off. They hadn’t hit a plane with denim in a few years and the last spare pair of jeans he’d owned had fallen apart in the intervening time. He wouldn’t let Taako transfigure anything for him, either, which reflected a sad lack of trust. It also said a lot about how much he’d learned in 40 years. Barry did sometimes choose to wear one of Lup’s big, flowy skirts, and if this had the potential to be a long-term, out-in-the-open _thing_ , they would be talking about how damn good he looked in burnt orange. But that might make the energy in the room weird again.

“Well?” Lup said. “Do you have a copy?”

“Why?” he asked.

“I’ve been curious for years,” she said. “Decades.”

“Yeah, but why?”

“Necromancy,” she said. “I took an intro when I went for that formal degree through a real, sit-down college. We never took another class in it cuz Taako hated it and I had other shit to specialize in but at this point, it’s getting hard to find something new to learn.”

“So you want to learn _necromancy_ ,” Barry said.

“Why crawl when you can leap, screaming, into the void?” Lup said.

Barry’s surprised laugh bounced her head on his stomach. His hand had moved to her arm without her realizing and he was rubbing a thumb gently up and down the ridge of her shoulder blade.

Lup held very still.

“Yeah, okay, I can dig a copy up,” Barry said. “It’s, uh. Well, it’s before Lucretia got us all writing better, so it’s—“

“I’ve read Magnus-penned pornography,” Lup said. “It can’t be worse than that.”

“Hey, in spite of all the tense-changes, he wrote some tender moments,” Barry said. 

“Oh, so you remember?”

“It was… vivid. He won, too, if I recall. Lucretia decreed it and everything. I think she liked the sheer volume of consent-checking and kink negotiation that went into the orgies. I, uh, well, yours was pretty good too, but… There was a lot of sounds? Um. Dirty talk, I mean. And onomatopoeia.”

“Yeah, it definitely stuck in the ol’ mental craw.” Lup faked a yawn-and-stretch that allowed her to roll around and shake Barry’s hand off in a casual way, because this was starting to feel too domestic. Their situation was heavy but also still just so… bright. She patted his cheek gently and winked down at him, this cutie, with his glasses still on and his eyes shining up at her with a mix of surprise and interest. 

“No round two,” she said, “I pulled nightshift on guarding our happy home. See ya in the morning, okay?”

“S-sure,” Barry said, levering himself up to watch her drag her clothes back on. “Um. Do you want company?”

“Rest your weary, well-fucked human frame,” Lup said, focusing on sliding her skirt back up her legs. Had to keep the hands and eyes busy right now.

“I— Well, yes, but I really don’t mind coming along if you, uh—“

Lup peeked up at him through her hair, trying to look reassuring while also not giving him much to go on. “Nah, Bar, it’s fine.”

He blinked and settled back. “Oh. Okay.”

“Sweet dreams!” Lup ducked out and almost slammed into Magnus, the guy she was relieving from watch-duty. 

He blinked at her for a second before remembering to leer. “Nice hair.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, thanks, Barry helped a lady out.” 

“I just _bet_ he did,” Magnus snickered.

Lup flipped him off with a grin and marched down the hallway, up the steps, and out into the open air. 

They were parked in the water, because the _Starblaster_ was a dirty bird right now. They’d found a freshwater lake and Dav had rigged the right illusions so it blended in with the other houseboats. Merle had dug into their pooled funds to buy yards and yards of the little climbing, flowery vines that attracted the light-beetles, so there were clusters of beetles strung all around the ship, glowing at close intervals. 

Of course, the folks on the other houseboats were semi-piratical, and the _Starblaster_ had plenty of things worth protecting on her, so there was still a need to man the decks. 

It was Month 8 and they were almost out of time for finding the Light. Lucretia’d done a statistics breakdown; 95% of the time, if they weren’t at least heading towards a reliable description of the Light of Creation by Month 7, they weren’t gonna find it before the Hunger did. Someone else had it, treasuring it, holding on to it, worshipping it…

Lup flopped in the sunbleached deck chair. Magnus had left her a cold beer in the icebox. She pried the cap off with the big knife Magnus had also left behind. It was ridiculous how he shed weapons the way Taako shed hair. 

A Merle-magicked crystal swung above her in a macrame sling, puddling her in gold light. Lucretia had taken to keeping the extra-small lute she was trying to learn by the deck chair, which was decent entertainment. It only had 4 strings and it was a fun combination of adorable and ridiculous to watch anyone try to play it. Lup gave it a few experimental strums. She imagined the soundwaves smoothing out over the lapping lake water. 

Lup had a bad voice for singing. She was great at speech-ing, orating, proclaiming or declaiming. She could advise like a motherfucker. Her singing voice was a dumpster fire, though, and Taako’s was just as bad. Still, she didn’t have any shame left in her—hadn’t for a hundred years at least—so she cleared her throat and attempted to hit a few notes on the little lute before she joined herself on vocals. _“Your beauty is beyond compare, with flaming locks of badass hair, with softest skin and eyes of purple green. Your smile is like breaking wind, your voice is loud as anything, I can’t remember the fucking words, meringue.”_

She strummed at random, slow enough that the discordant notes had time to fade into prettiness, watching the shifting gleam of boats on the water. 

_“We talk about you in our sleep, it’s all I can do to keep from jackin’ off consistently, Mister Clean.”_ She laughed once, sharp, delighted, and sang, _“And I can totally understand how easy it can be with one hand, but have you tried switching off, saltine?”_

Lup cracked up at that one, alone and amused. She was the last thing awake on this boat, marooned in a strange lake of untrustworthy people who would never be as dangerous as she was. The water was inky, dotted with carefully constructed lights, nothing like the star-specked sky above but beautiful nonetheless. 

She was making up the chorus when someone on a distant boat called, “Shut the fuck up!” in Elvish and Lup remembered she wasn’t as alone as she sometimes pretended to be. What an odd time to be reminded. She hummed along with the little lute for a while longer, softer, trying to blend with the night instead of oppose it. No one else made a sound, so perhaps she succeeded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks commenter pip for asking who won the porn contest back in Cycle 15! Hope this was a satisfactory answer.
> 
> Lup's playing a ukulele and singing a bastardized version of 'Jolene' at the end there, in the style of me at my most silly.


	11. Year 47 - the Legato Conservatory

Taako busted into her room and said, “Okay, you and Barold have got to cool it.”

Lup smiled up at him innocently for a moment, and then let her eyebrows rise and her teeth show in a truly salacious grin.

Taako took a deep breath. “Lup, I am begging you. The guy is whistling in the halls, he’s… he’s _giddy_. He keeps running into shit and just laughing. Magnus told you guys this world’s gonna get wrecked and he couldn’t stop grinning, _I saw you pinch his butt_.”

Lup’s grin grew.

“You are killing me,” Taako said. “I know I told Barold it was cool but you chewed my ass for it and now I have to suffer your nasty couple shit? As your treasured only sibling, whatever you’re doing to this man, you gotta dial it back. You gotta bring it down, okay? Turn the volume down. Cool it.”

Lup winked.

Taako stopped pulling his own hair and sighed. “Lup.”

Lup’s smile dropped and she matched him, sigh for sigh. “Taako, I am not gonna let you nudge your way into this fully committed jam I have going right now. It’s been, mm, a week since things got serious? We’re gonna be in the ‘fuck each other’s brains out and coo about it afterwards’ stage for a while. This is your fair warning.”

“You’re quieter now than you are when you roll solo,” Taako said, like he was admitting something painful.

Lup shrugged. “Don’t really want to get into details but the dude prefers a whisper to a shout.”

“Grossarooni.” Taako didn’t look dramatically horrified or even his standard horrified, though; he just looked drained. He thumped down beside her on her massive, luxurious mattress that the Conservatory had given her after she and Barry brought the fuckin’ house down with their duet. The rooms you got assigned were all about success and boy howdy, had they succeeded.

Taako said, “Hey, I’m super happy for you guys; you know that, right?”

“I know.”

“This isn’t gonna, like, change anything?”

Lup shut her journal—so Lucretia was rubbing of on her, what of it?—and took one of his hands. He’d chewed his thumbnail to the quick and his nail polish was just a little gold island in each fingernail ocean. “It’s gonna change most things.”

His fingers tightened around hers. He didn’t speak.

“I wanna be—well, not straight with you, but truthful.”

He huffed an acknowledgment of the classic queer twin joke.

“We’re in love?” She winced at the questioning sound in her voice and repeated it. “We’re in love. Gods, that feels weird to say.”

“Why? You are, right?”

Lup barked out a laugh. “Yeah, because saying true things never feels weird.”

“Okay, fair point.”

“I love Barry and I don’t want to even say it in case I wear the words out. We have time, Taako, so much time that I think about it and feel _dizzy_. He’s a human. You think I forgot or didn’t think about it?” she added when he looked at her. “Yeah, I know. He’s human. And, like, physically almost forty. That’s oldish for humans. Especially the ones we roll with.”

“We’re babysitting,” Taako said. His voice cracked.

Lup pressed his hand between both of hers but just said, “We’re sticking together as a crew and we’re sticking together forever, basically. That’s what we’ve got. We know what we’re working with. And, Taako, I’m _excited_. I’ve never been in love like this. Well, I mean, specifically like _this_. With him. And it’s good.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Lup repeated, not looking up from their hands. She could hear the suppressed tears in Taako’s voice; she knew he hated being caught with feelings. “He used to idolize me, I think. Or, like, pedestal me? And that’s delicious, don’t get me wrong, you know that’s a sweet feeling, but it’s not sustainable. And now I think he— Okay, he’s legit said that he started liking everything I do. Everything I am. And he wanted me to see everything he is, to see if I would like what he was. And I do, Taako, that’s the thing. When you’re both super into each other? Meeting on an emotional level that feels like it’s exactly the same, or averages out from moment to moment? Fucking incredible.”

She waited for Taako to take a shaky breath. She kept her eyes glued to the bedspread, lips pressed tightly together. He started to say, “I guess—“

“And he fucks like an orc.”

Taako tackled her, screaming obscenities, and Lup laughed until she was crying, wrapping her arms around her brother to try to stop him from vengefully tickling her. He gave up quickly, which was a relief, and then said, “All right. He had my blessing already but now I give you my blessing to date the nerdlord.”

“Thanks, homie.”


	12. Year 52

Merle took his hands off Lup’s leg. “All right, I think that’s good. Knit together pretty well and the bruising’s going down. And we’re coming up on the last week so, uh—“

“Listen, hold on a sec,” Lup said, grabbing Merle’s arm before he could go for the hem of his sweatshirt. They’d gotten it at a roadside rest stop during their wanderings around this world, and it had been designed for a human man so it was way too long and the shoulders were way too tight. It said FOXY GRANDPA. Merle had made Lup promise to get it to the _Starblaster_ so he could wear it next cycle, too. She was debating whether to accidentally burn it or feed it to an accommodating badger on the way back to the ship.

“What?” Merle said. “You can totally make it back from here. It’s a hop, skip, and— Well, okay, you should probably give that bone a little time before you start hopping and skipping, but it’ll hold. It’s pretty flat terrain, so long as you don’t find any more pit traps.”

“This isn’t about the leg, Merle,” Lup said. “Just give me a few minutes. To talk, I mean.”

Merle sat back down next to her. “Sure, what’s up?”

Lup lay back in the grass and swallowed back dizziness. She’d banged her head up pretty bad in the pitfall that had been so cleverly hidden, and even though Merle’s healing was taking, she still felt concussed as shit. “I’m kinda curious, that’s all.”

“About?”

“You dying.”

“Oh.” Merle cleared his throat. “Did Dav put you up to…?”

“Oh, no no no,” Lup said, turning her head to meet his gaze. “He doesn’t know shit about what I’m doing here, no. I’m just kind of wondering… Do you ever worry about the consequences?”

“Of dying?”

“Yes.”

Merle’s thick eyebrows crinkled up. “I mean… Maybe a little? I don’t jump into Parlay till I’m sure you all don’t need a healer anymore, I guess. And good thing I waited, with you running around freeing animals from traps and shit like you’re Snow White!”

“Who’s Snow White?”

“Some dumb broad that my dad knew who kept running into Pan Camp when he was living in the forest enclave. Got lost a lot. He and his buddies helped her out a bit and she finally left them alone. She was gaga for animals, though.”

“These ones are cool animals, though,” Lup said. “I like these ones. They speak Common.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s cool. They have stupid names, though. Windteeth? Fart-eater, more like.”

Lup snickered. “True, true. Not my point, though. I’m talking less about our lack of a healer and more about how you are just straight up out of commish for the rest of a cycle, you know?”

“Well, yeah, I know,” Merle said. “And you guys can’t heal—“

“Not about the healing, my dude,” Lup insisted. “Listen, Merle, I feel like we just get wrecked so fucking much. Davenport’s still got that magic steering wheel touch, we still get away time after time, but we’re short a Merle every time. And we want you around. We’re getting no extra intel anymore from—“

She could tell this tactic had failed. Merle’s chin tucked in and his eyebrows lowered and he said, “I’m doing my best here, Lup.”

Lup groaned, feeling the buzz in her aching skull. “Sorry, Merle, this is coming out wrong. Um. I just want to know what it’s like to be… I don’t know. I don’t know. There’s gotta be a better way, that’s all I can think. Giving up a life for the team and then having to just wait around for the Hunger to help us shift planes and reset? What are you even doing during the interim?”

“I don’t visit the Astral Plane, that’s for sure,” Merle said. “And I haven’t heard jack shit from Pan, no matter how many times John kills me.”

“Why do you still Parlay?” Lup asked. “You know how it’s gonna end.”

Merle leaned back, propping himself up on his outstretched hands. His head tilted back and he stared up at the shifting curtain of green above them. The little cherry blossoms tucked in his beard were still going strong, even though she and Taako had braided their stick-stems in there weeks ago.

“You’re the last person in the crew to ask me,” Merle said.

“Shit,” Lup said. “I hate it when I’m unoriginal.”

“I’m just surprised you all didn’t compare notes,” Merle said with a snort. “Maybe every one of you thought you were the first to work up the guts? Not that you’re a coward or anything, Lup,” he added quickly. “I actually thought you’d be the only one not to ask. I was kinda looking forward to it.”

“Sorry to disappoint. Can I get an answer, though?”

Merle stroked his mustache. “I could give you the same answer I gave everyone else; I think he’s got more to offer us. And I think I can keep him guessing about all of our shit, too.”

“But what’s a real answer?” Lup asked.

“Who says that one’s not real?”

“It’s not the whole truth. You have more to share, right?”

Merle sighed. “I like talking to the guy.”

“Merle,” Lup said, keeping her voice as gentle as possible. “You’re trapped on a ship with six people you’ve spent over half a century with. You cannot be this desperate to add another person to that mix of inevitability. And I’m being generous, calling that fucker a ‘person.’”

“I do, I really like the guy,” Merle insisted. “He’s a good listener. We play chess, now.”

“You play fucking chess with the Hunger.”

“Yeah! He wins, but I’m getting better.”

“Merle?” Lup struggled to sit up. “How desperate are you for a new face? Seriously.”

Merle shook his head. “He’s a new friend. A new friend opportunity, at least.”

“He keeps killing you!”

“Well, I don’t die for keepsies!” Merle yelled.

“We miss you!”

“I’ve been around half a century with you, I know you don’t miss me that much! I mean, shit, you have Taako, you have Barry, you’ve got the rest of the _Starblaster_ crew around you, what the fuck do you need me for?”

“It’s not about need!” Lup howled. “I want you to stay! Why do you keep shutting it down? Fuck!” She gripped her pounding head with both hands. “What do we have to say to get you to stick around? I’ll say it.”

“Lup…”

She rubbed her temples. “Whatever. Do your thing. We got the Light anyway. Gods, this fucking headache…”

“Stop getting trapped in pits,” Merle suggested. He rested a cool hand over her eyes for a moment, and she sighed in relief as the pulsing ache faded. 

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

His sweatshirt landed in her lap. She looked over at him and gave him a twiddle-finger wave. 

“Don’t look so bummed about it,” he laughed. “I’ll see ya in a week.”

“Have fun,” she said. “With your _chess_. God, I thought you playing Euchre with Dav was maximum old man status but fucking chess is a whole new low.”

He winked, and then he settled onto the ground and concentrated. Lup watched the top of his head begin to fade to greyscale. It poured over him, down his thick beard and where it blended with his blunt, hairy torso and strong arms, down his nasty cargo shorts (she was going to have to _intervene_ about those shorts next cycle, just like she’d done with the five pairs before them) and his sturdy calves. His grimy socks and Fantasy Birkenstocks were the last to pale. 

Lup sent a Message to Taako: _Found a sweet vape trick and it’s Merle, sadface._

There was a long pause before he sent back: _I won’t tell the Starblasterinos what you said exactly and this is my gift to you, my sister._

Lup had such a good sibling.

She waited, working her way to standing and doing a few stretches to make sure the muscle and tendon reattachments would hold. She kept her eyes on the Merle-shape, and when it flickered with an inner light and became nothing but regular smoke, she sighed and started walking back to the ship. It was a two-day trek on regular legs, so probably a three-day with a bum leg. Maybe more, if she found any reasons to stop and free the animals these fuckers were trapping in some kind of mass genocide venture. They could talk, they were intelligent, and they didn’t deserve all the sneaky fuckin’ traps set to take them out.

Lup looked around the ravine. Merle had just seduced some roots to dig through the few feet of earth between the ravine and the bear pitfall (while Lup stuck her fingers in her ears and hummed loudly) and then he’d dragged her over here while muttering to Pan for healing. The pitfall was still a danger, but she also had to climb out of the ravine. Not a great move for Merle.

She would also need both hands. She looked down at the already-grimy orange sweatshirt, then sighed and pulled it on. Now she was the Foxy Grandpa.

She had a week or so. A week without Merle’s company. A week knowing he was dead and a motherfucker in a mind-palace boardroom had killed him.

Lup didn’t have a lot of patience left, these days. She didn’t have a lot of tolerance left, either, if the ‘tolerance’ was directed at the Hunger. She was gonna have to talk her ideas out with Barry but there had to be a way to make a difference post-life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been listening to Critical Role now (I need all the DnD in my life) and they used Message recently and it's a cool cantrip!


	13. Year 59

It was great to be breaking down the barriers of masculinity and femininity, but Lup was starting to lose her mind a little bit over the fact that she couldn’t find a single thing to do with Lucretia that just the two of them enjoyed. It had been over half a century now and still, Lup would break out the nail polish and Magnus would appear like magic. Cute outfit dress-ups? Taako wanted to join, and he would; gods help who tried to stop him. Daisy chains? Merle was there. Full facial makeover? Barry would hover, staring at the eyeliner with hope in his eyes until one of them gave him a sufficiently subtle pick-me-up. Lucretia pulled out art supplies and Davenport stepped in with his rulers and calipers, all ready to make miniature models.

Finally, Lup and Lucretia took up hiking together. Magnus didn’t get the appeal of going slowly, Taako didn’t understand enjoying nature, Merle would get left behind as he stopped to inspect every plant, Barry hated exercise for exercise’s sake, and Davenport got nervous if he was too far from the ship.

“We both hate hiking, right?” Lup said.

Lucretia nodded, her breath coming heavy as she lifted each foot and set it down hard on the packed, stony earth.

Lup nodded to herself. “Hiking sucks.”

“Gets us. Out. And about.”

“Yeah, but why’s this world so goddamn hilly?” Lup said.

“Volcanoes,” was all Lucretia could manage.

“Yeah, okay.” She hauled herself up onto a ledge and reached down for Lucretia. “You all right?”

Lucretia gave a thumbs up before taking Lup’s hand and letting herself be dragged onto the next level of this hike. Maybe this was more of a scrambling mountain climb? Whatever it was, it sucked and they mutually hated it. The things you do to get some time alone with ya girl.

They stopped a little more than halfway up. It was a decent enough view and Lup had sweated through her shirt and bra and down her ass crack and she was done. Lucretia thumped down next to her on the rock Lup had picked. She took off her floppy-brimmed hat and fanned herself with it for a while, then switched to fanning Lup. Lup posed for a moment, drinking in the friend-generated breeze, then laughed and cast a little charm to swirl the air around them. 

“You kind of just throw it around, don’t you?” Lucretia said.

“Throw what around?”

“Magic.”

“It’s there for me to throw around right now, babe. I got spell slots to burn for the next few months, till the Hunger comes. And I’m happy to waste them on you and me and girl time.”

Lucretia smiled. “I’m… I’m glad we get to do this, still.”

“What do you mean ‘still’? We just started hiking cuz this fuckin’ world is all hikes all the time and we need some quads of steel now.”

“No, the hanging out. You know what I meant.”

“Yeah.” Lup leaned back on her elbows and let the watery sunlight filter over her, what little managed to poke through the scraps of cloud. “Why does everyone think that, just because me and Barry are a forever-extra-bonus-team now, y’all are getting left out? Me and Taako have been a forever-team for our whole lives and no one got freaked about it.”

Lucretia was silent.

“Are people mad?” Lup asked. “Because of the regular sex and being in love and all that?”

Lucretia let out a big breath in a wheeze. “Oh my god, Lup, what the hell?”

“Just wanna know, girlfriend.”

Lucretia was silent, but the quality was different. She was reflecting on how to answer, which was an answer in and of itself but Lup had time.

“Yes,” Lucretia said at last. “I think… I mean, I can speak for myself and say I’m a bit jealous. Um. That’s a bit of the writer in me, though.”

“How so?”

“It’s just… love is something we’re told to strive for. And not just love, but a particular kind. Romantic love. Long-term and monogamous and all these layers upon layers of idealization. I think most of us have given up on love, or it’s falling to the wayside for the work we’re doing and the discoveries we’re making. The worlds we see, the people we meet… none of it’s sustainable. It’s fleeting. It’s unfair. And then you and Barry find it, and yes, people are jealous. I am. But I don’t hate you for it, and I can’t bring myself to resent you. I’m just… passively jealous.”

“I knew you’d be— well, not straight, but that you’d level with me,” Lup said. She grinned, inviting Lucretia into the joke. 

Lucretia looked at her lap.

Lup leaned forward to try and catch her eye. “I’m not mad.”

“I know you aren’t.”

“I’m not really guilty about it, either.”

Lucretia’s mouth twitched. “Of course you aren’t.”

“Yeah, I’m rubber and Taako’s glue. If you ever get jealous he’s in love, and if he finds out, get ready for a lot of him bitching at you and bringing it up for years to come.”

“I know you both,” Lucretia said. “I know.”

“I guess my only response is… I get that it feels unfair? Um. I’m comfortable enough in this long-term romance thing that I can see how fuckin’ unlikely it is. It’s taken so, so long. But, I mean, you have to have known. Me and Barry have been hooking up for a while.”

“We’re aware. We’ve all been aware.” Lucretia did meet Lup’s eye to add, “Not that you two were disgustingly obvious or loud or any of that, but it’s… clear. It was.”

Lup propped her chin up on her hand. “Wanna hear how we first hooked up?”

Lucretia winced slightly. “Gross.”

“Ah, that’s Taako’s influence. Once upon a time you’d be all over me to tell the tale of the first time Barry and I boned. You’d take notes.”

Lucretia was giggling behind her hands, which was the cutest shit. Lup wanted to bottle the sound and drink it on gloomy days.

“I’m gonna tell you, get your pencil and your shorthand ready,” Lup said. “I’m not joking. Taako’s heard this already but history needs to know the origins of Lup and Barry. Come on, get ready to jot it down.”

Lucretia dug in her fanny pack (again: cute!) and pulled out a palm-sized pad of paper and prepared herself, looking worried and amused at the same time. 

Lup lay back on the rock again and watched the clouds scud around. They were wispy-gold in the light of the sun, which didn’t set on this world; it would just skim the horizon, dip behind mountain ranges for a while, then reemerge. They were at the wrong latitude to get regular day-and-night hours, but it meant that sunsets lasted until they were sunrises. This one had barely gotten started.

“Taako told him to go for it,” she said. “I guess Taako knew before I did, that Barry was into me. Maybe everyone did, but I don’t think so.”

“Magnus definitely didn’t,” Lucretia murmured.

Lup laughed. “Yeah, he was fuckin’ shocked the first time he caught us. I don’t feel bad about missing the signs or anything. I saw plenty of signs and I had some feelings of my own but I wasn’t willing to risk it. ‘It’ being the mission, the family-feeling, all that. But then there was that cycle… The humans didn’t make it. All three of you had just the wrong body chemistry for that one world. You had to hole up in our room for the whole time, you were so sick, even though we filtered the air and water and stuff as best we could. I dunno if you remember it that well?”

“Vaguely. I lost a lot of time.”

“Makes sense.” Lup refocused. “Magnus and Barry actually went out in it so they were toast. And Taako and Dav and Merle and I were all bummed, but I remember just missing Barry super bad. I missed you and Magnus too, don’t get me wrong, and I’d go in and spoonfeed you soup and stuff, but missing Barry felt… different. I started feeling sick about it, when I thought about talking out some theory and then remembered he was gone. And Taako was like, ‘Yeah, it’s cuz you love him, doofus.’ And he was right. I hate it when he’s right.”

“He’s insufferable.”

“Totally. So the cycle after that, I kinda… God, it feels predatory but I waited for a moment alone with the guy. And then I had to wait for a moment when he wasn’t talking about work. I think it took me a few months?” Lup closed her eyes. “I think that’s probably the only time I’ve ever felt like a coward. You know what cowardice is?”

She heard Lucretia’s breath hiss between her teeth, but the woman didn’t speak. She was the Chronicler in that moment; she was waiting for the rest of the story. 

“I know people think Taako’s a coward,” Lup said. “Just cuz he hangs back, or because he’ll run for it when shit starts to hit the fan and paint the walls. He’s not a coward, but I guess it can look that way. He’s always gonna be there when you need him. He’s not gonna back away from a job that needs to be done. Self-preservation is a priority, but he’s got room in that heart of his to preserve some other people, too. 

“No. Cowardice is refusing to _be_ there. At all. Never showing up because you don’t wanna risk a fuckin’ thing. And you can be _physically present_ without _being there_ , by the way. Secrets and lies, it’s all cowardice. And Barry noticed, and he was like, ‘Lup, what’s wrong?’ Listen, at this point, Lucretia, you can make a little note to add some sultry description of his big, earnest eyes and that sweet mouth of his, okay? I’ll get you that piece of the story later but it would just bog me down right now.”

Lucretia laughed softly, but she was still in it for the tale. Her pencil didn’t stop scratching away.

Lup interlaced her fingers across her stomach. “So I womaned up and I told a half-truth. I said, ‘Sorry, but I’m getting really distracted by how much I want to touch you right now.’ The word ‘touch’ is super hot, you ever notice that?”

Lucretia hummed assent.

“I made it all sexy and stuff, didn’t bust out the ‘I think I’m in love with you,’ just kept it casual. ‘I want to touch you right now.’ He blushed, obvi, which is gratifying. He didn’t say anything, though. Didn’t even stammer. Couldn’t look at me. Freaked me out, honestly. You can leave that part out in the official story, but in your notes? Between you and me? I knew I was gonna have to keep pushing. I was past the cowardice, though, so I said, ‘And by _touch you_ I mean _kiss you_. Am I being clear enough?’ 

“And he kept blushing, but he still wasn’t speaking. But I know him, so I waited. And that, Lucretia, was brave as fuck. It was worth it, too. He was putting his words together. So he wouldn’t, you know, stutter too bad. Doesn’t bother me but it bothers him.

“He said, ‘I really, really want to kiss you, too.’ So I said, ‘Kiss at the same time, on three?’ and he laughed, which meant he’s a keeper. I knew it before then but it feels good to be reminded of how much of a keeper he is. But then he said, ‘No, not on three,’ and then the fucker kissed me first! I’m not used to that. I gave him a good time, in spite of the shock to my system. We made out for a minute and then I got him up against a wall and we can fade to black right there cuz I know that you can enjoy a good erotic moment with the best of them but I don’t think your readers need to know the sweaty, moaning, hair-pulling details.”

Lucretia made a little sound like she was trying not to choke. Lup smiled blissfully for a moment, then opened her eyes. 

Lucretia scribbled for a few seconds more, then sat back and set her notebook in her lap. She looked down at Lup, eyes wide. “Wow.”

Lup winked. “Yeah. It’s been real nice.”

“It sounds like it.”

“Thanks for taking the dictation, babe.” Lup sat up with a groan. “Makes me feel like my little love story is worth reading.”

“I’m just kind of shocked that it happened on just another day,” Lucretia said. “It sounds like it started… casually.” She had started doing her hand stretches, which was gratifying; it meant she’d been taking a lot of fast notes.

“Well, all our epic days usually end with someone dying,” Lup said. “That’s a major boner-kill.”

“What about ’we survived’ sex?” Lucretia suggested.

Lup’s grin nearly split her face in half, and Lucretia actually squeaked at the sudden facial expression. “Girl, it’s sad but true.”

Lucretia laughed for a moment, then tucked her writing supplies away. They sat in silence together for a while. The shadows were long and low, but they’d only shift their position, not their size; the day-long sunset was here.

“It was casual for a while there,” Lup admitted. “I hate to say it, but I wasn’t ready for it to be big and real and love with a capital ‘L.’ I wanted it to be just like… friends with bennies? Best friends with bennies? It was all just moments out of time for a few years. And then, since that absolutely delicious trip to Legato, it’s been one big moment that belongs to both of us. Anyway. Want to head back?”

Lucretia nodded, but she didn’t stand. 

Lup waited.

“I’m still jealous of what you have,” Lucretia said. “So, that’s there.”

“You’re gonna feel what you feel, no sorries about it. Just no shaming, okay?”

“Never. I _am_ happy for you, Lup. Truly.” 

Lup scooted closer and got her arm around Lucretia. “Then we’re good.”

Lucretia smiled at her. “Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me and Hic had such a long message thread going about cowardice. I still don't know where I land on it but I like thinking about it.


	14. Year 66

Lup cornered Barry easily. He kind of left himself open to being cornered by her. He was going through the neat stacks of books on his side of the room he still shared with Merle when she stepped over the empty plant pots nearest to the door and said, “Babe?”

He looked up at her. He was squatting by the tucked-in-the-corner books, which were consulted less-frequently. The room looked uneven and stripped; no one’s mattresses were where they should be. They’d agreed, in quiet groups of two and three, to move their sleeping arrangements for this cycle into a communal situation. Lucretia was freaked and freaking everyone else out with her nocturnal check-ins and they really just needed to be all in one place for her to know they were here. 

Year 65 had been extremely bad for her. No one was quite sure how bad, but the consensus was that she didn’t need any stress this cycle. They’d bunked down in a grassy valley, there was a splintery glass castle twisting into the sky a few miles away with some farms dotted around it, and everyone was going to have a quiet time inspecting all these really fucked up glass creations that were scattered around like discarded artworks. At least one was a mile high. This world was ruined in the way the last cycle had been, like a decaying civilization, but there were flowers here, and the glass glittered, and no Judges shot them out of the sky like judgmental assholes. It was the kind of ruined Lup could get down with.

All of this was to say they were sticking together for this year. There was plenty to see and do, the Light hadn’t landed yet… This was gonna be a healing cycle. Lucretia seemed fine in the way Davenport seemed fine. If you didn’t look, you would never see the lines around her mouth, the stiffness in her shoulders, the poise she used to hold herself together. She wasn’t fine yet; she’d get there, though.

All the rest of them had shit on their minds, too.

Barry stood up with a groan and said, “What’s up, Lup?”

“Can I… talk with you about morality?”

He nudged his glasses up his nose with a finger. “Uh, I guess? Is, is this because of the Judges?”

“Yeah, those fucks.”

Barry nodded slowly. “That was super weird. I didn’t really track what they were talking about in the end, there. About us judging the world or something? They said something about a child and being mean to it. I don’t think we’ve been mean to any kids.”

“Yeah. And turning to stone super duper sucked.”

“Right? What gives with all that? I think that’s the weirdest way any of us have died so far.”

“I don’t like to think too hard on it, hon, so I’ll give you that one,” Lup said. “I didn’t want to talk about that, though. I more wanted to talk about the deadly sins thing.”

“Oh, right.” He smiled slightly. “You were so cool about that. Like, gods, it’s so awesome how you just _know_ yourself and you _own_ it. You said all the charges they were going to try and hit you with and it totally took the power away from—“

“I still died, don’t forget. With all the rest of us. And I was more disturbed by _your_ charges. Sloth and envy? Man, they don’t know fuck-all about you.”

Barry shrugged. “They really didn’t make a lot of sense, like I said. It’s really weird to break us down into like. Seven deadly sins.”

Lup counted up on her fingers. “Wrath, lust, pride, greed, gluttony, envy, sloth, yeah?”

“Yeah, sounds right.”

“My boy was the only one who got greed,” Lup sighed. “No one looks at the whole picture, though. No one looks at what got you to that point, you know?”

“Surprised he didn’t get lust,” Barry murmured.

Lup shuddered. “That’s my brother, babe. Don’t.”

“You said it out loud!” Barry laughed. “You told those big statues ‘lust,’ and you looked at me!”

“Did I wink?” Lup asked. “I’m pretty sure I winked, too.”

“You smiled a little. Well, it was more like a smirk. It looked dirty as hell.”

“Sounds like the kind of shit I’d pull,” Lup laughed. She smiled at him now and basked a bit in the fact that she was still half a room away from him and knew she could go over there and take his hand and he’d love her. He loved her at any distance. She didn’t have to go grab him to prove it.

“What does this have to do with morality, Lup?” Barry asked. “I’m getting lost in your eyes here but I know you had a point to make.”

Lup blinked herself back into the moment. “Oh, shit, right. I mean, I was just thinking about the simplification of it. Deciding a certain reaction is a sin is a reduction. And we, the crew, have got to keep from doing that simplification thang. It’s hard, though. I mean, we keep hitting these worlds and trying to save them and the Light’s gonna fall in a couple days and we’re gonna go find it and save another world, but, Barry, we aren’t connecting with these planes anymore. Not a lot, anyway.”

Barry nodded slowly. “I guess I see where you’re coming from. You and Magnus and Merle don’t make planar friends as much as you used to.”

“Yeah. Not a great feeling. But it feels worse when we leave it all behind. It’s like the worst, most constant road trip ever. And we can’t plan breaks because we never know where we’re gonna end up. Lucretia’s had the worst time of it so far, but it kind of emphasizes my point; losing anyone in a cycle feels super, super dangerous.”

“It’s always been dangerous,” Barry said, his tone a little sad and a lot resigned. “I guess we’ve been lucky, though. We’ve made it this far and this is the first time almost all of us… you know…”

“Died.”

Barry shrugged.

“Barry,” Lup said, stepping forward, “This is my point. We gotta find a way to fix shit so we don’t have to, like, hang around and wait it out when we die. But I don’t even know what kind of sin that fits under. It feels like sinning but against what? Is it greedy? Wanting more time, more stability, more influence after death? That’s the only one I can think of it fitting under but fuck, babe, they didn’t mention it at all when they talked about me.”

Barry was watching her, like the space between them was too far. Lup stepped closer to him and tucked him under her chin because she _could_. She felt his arms slide around her waist, under her coat, gripping his own wrists behind her back. The smell of his hair was heavy and a little unclean, a little greasy. His glasses dug into her collarbones.

“I want all the time with you,” he said.

“Aw, hon.”

“I don’t know jack shit about sin, Lup,” he mumbled into her shirt. “They named mine and I just, I dunno. I didn’t get it. I still don’t. But I want all the time with you, and our, uh. Uh.”

“Just say it,” she whispered, because she knew a nervous stutter from a stop-that-thought stutter by now.

“Our f-family.”

“Yeah.” She sighed, sliding her cheek down the side of his head until she could say softly into his wee little ear, “We deserve way, way more than the bullshit the Hunger gives us.”

“T-true.”

“And I think, babe, there’s gotta be a way for us to save our people, you know? Let’s crack some books and start figuring out how to sneak around perma-death.”

Barry pulled back enough to stand on his toes and kiss her, which was delightful. She couldn’t resist a smile, even though it stretched her mouth against his far too much, and pretty soon he had to pull back because his lips were on her teeth. 

“I love you,” he said.

She kissed him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This world is based very, very loosely on _The Lies of Locke Lamora._


	15. Year 69

Their hands were clasped, as they always were when they reknit after a planar changeover. Lup felt Taako give her fingers a squeeze just as she started swinging their joined hands. They were both grinning from ear to ear.

“We made it!” Taako yelled. 

“We made it!” Lup yelled back.

“Fucking hell,” Merle groaned. “What happened? Were you all butchered after I left ya? I swan to John, I won’t—”

“No one else died last cycle,” Davenport said, staring at the twins with confusion. “We had the Light, we met with the leaders of the guilds and had them teach us to—“

“Recap later!” Lup yelled. She looked at Taako expectantly, only to find he was already deep in Conjuration concentration. He was holding out a hand in front of himself, making a ring with his fingers and thumb. He spared a second to wink at Lucretia, who rolled her eyes. As a shape shimmered into existence—a bulbous body hanging from a long, thin neck—he raised his other hand to cup the bottom of the shape. He dug one ragged, regenerated thumbnail into the very top and, as it finally manifested, he popped the cork and sprayed Magnus and Barry with champagne.

Lup had taken the time to Summon the crew’s mugs, dangling them in a clacking bundle from her fingers. “Listen, my dudes! We are having a time of celebration that I hope will continue on throughout this cycle!”

“What the fuck?” Magnus sputtered, squinting through the spray of bubbly still coating his face and dripping into his sideburns. “That got up my nose, dude!”

“Sh sh sh sh,” Lup hushed, holding out each mug for Taako to fill and then handing it to the correct crew member. Davenport had one with ‘Worlds Best Dad’ on it because Magnus was a sucker for jokes that needed to be made but weren’t necessarily funny. For himself, Magnus had gotten the largest mug he could at a craft market. It had a bear on it, which was someone’s sports mascot—none of them had been able to decipher more of the runes around the bear’s snarling head beyond the word ‘kickball.’ Merle had made his own mug and it looked like a sad coil pot with a handle. Lucretia owned like 30 mugs for all the tea she drank, but the only one allowed in the kitchen was the one depicting a rocket ship. It was an exploded diagram with labelled parts and everyone loved staring at it blankly when they had morning meetings. Barry had the planar system on his mug, with Fantasy Jesus frowning down at the entire network from the outside and saying, ‘Don’t masturbate.’ Taako had a stoneware goblet with vines etched around the sides and some bas-relief images of castles and horses and shit.

Lup had broken her mug last cycle (freak boredom accident), so she stood by Barry and stage whispered, “We’ll share.”

“What are we toasting?” he asked her, but she just wrapped her arm around his shoulders and kept her eyes on Taako.

Taako raised his goblet high. Years of conditioning made everyone else lift their mugs toward him as well. He passed Lup the nearly-empty bottle of champagne without looking at her and she lifted that to him instead, giving Barry a squeeze to let him know she still loved him even if she had her own drank now.

“To the year of sixty-nine!” Taako shouted. Lup held her breath in the silence after that statement.

“No fucking way,” Davenport said, which was enough to snap everyone into gales of laughter; their captain hardly ever swore.

“Holy shit,” Magnus said around his giggles.

“You pricks!” Merle wheezed, trying not to spill his mug as he doubled over. “You absolute jackasses!”

“How long have you been planning this?” Lucretia asked.

Taako and Lup clinked drinks and Lup said, “A couple years. We wanted to go bigger but we ultimately decided speed was of the essence, just in case you all realized what year it was.”

“Sixty-nine fuckin’ years with you nerds, and I’d do it all again,” Taako said. He sipped his champagne and sighed happily. “I nailed the spell, too, I hope you all appreciate it. And listen, I hope this cycle is on a particularly sexy world. Beach world, but with other people and their hot beach bods. A Fantasy Baywatch world.”

“Where you can sixty-nine publicly and without fear,” Lup agreed. She swigged from the bottle and cast her eyes down to Barry. He was covering his face with a hand, which definitely meant he was blushing. She swooped in and gave one of his warm, red ears a smooch.

Davenport handed his mug to Lucretia, the contents missing only a single, obligatory sip, and he walked back to the helm. “I’m on the clock, so no further champagne for me,” he said, but he was smiling. As he settled into his seat, where he regenerated every year, he added, “I’m weirdly proud. I know it must have been torture to keep it a secret as long as you did.”

“I’m glad you appreciate our sacrifice, Cap’n’port,” Lup said. 

“Do you think Fisher would like champagne?” Magnus mused aloud. He flinched at the collective “NO” that his crewmates shouted at him.

They had a proper party when they landed. This world was a glacial one, criss-crossed with strange bridges of spun ice that looked like delicate spiderwebs. They set the ship down far from these structures (structures meant civilization, and they were wary of civilization after the Judges world). Davenport shut down exterior lights and cranked the interior heat, and continued their celebration with even more Conjured booze. Taako had come up with a Cycle 69 cocktail he called the Tongueblaster, which no one wanted to order except Magnus. He declared it was kind of bitter, but not in a bad way, and then made serious, intense eye-contact with Taako as he drank it. 

As he set his empty glass down, Magnus added, “The joke is that it tastes like jizz.”

“That’s disgusting,” Lucretia said, “thank you so much for clarifying.”

“Not wrong, though,” Lup said. She was sticking with Conjured cider for now; it was making her burpy. Davenport was supposed to be helping her empty the cask she’s had Taako make but he was falling asleep in Barry’s lap. It felt like an adorable bookend to the first time they’d held a rager on the Starblaster, when Barry had been the one to fall asleep and Davenport hadn’t even shown up to the festivities. It was progress, of a sort. A corruption of their captain.

Merle nudged her shoulder. “Should I get a pipe going, or…?”

Lup shrugged. “I don’t really feel like it, but you can do whatever. It’s a chill party anyway, despite what Taako was going for with the sexual tension thing.”

“Yeah, guess you’re right.” Merle settled back into the big, pillowy beanbag chair he’d made himself a few years ago. It smelled like him, unfortunately, and was mostly burlap, so no one ever fought him for it. He sighed happily as he burrowed his ass deeper into the chair.

“Merle,” Lup said, “do you think it’s weird that we’re getting old and sleepy even though we literally reset every year?”

“Well, I think the issue is that I keep comparing parties,” Merle said. “This is nothing compared to that time in the world that was all pollution and trash? I had to be fucked up that whole year to keep from freaking out over how sad all those plants were.” He shuddered, only somewhat theatrically.

“Yeah, that world was pretty gross. And you were very, very high.”

“Mmmhmm. Haven’t chased that doja so hard since.”

Lup snorted into her cider and had to cough the bubbles out of her nose. “Yep,” she finally managed. “Doja indeed.”

Merle swigged from his mug of booze thoughtfully. “You and Taako are pretty amazing at these spells these days. This tastes great.”

“We’ve had a shitton of practice.”

“It’s pretty cool how much we know. See, now, you’re mad you get tired early, but _I’m_ shocked we keep our brainpower intact for this long. You and Taako learn so many spells! And Barry does spells good too, I guess. Magnus is still kind of just keeping with his whole fighting-punching thing, but he’s damn good at it.”

“And you’re shocked by this?”

“Shocked you all stuck with it so long! Shocked our brains can hold all this info.”

“Yeah… There’s some tradeoff for being stuck in a cycle,” Lup said. “Oodles of practice time.”

“Lup!” Taako yelled, scrambling over Lucretia’s sprawled legs. He was waving one of the crystals that Lucretia sometimes used to scry.

“What, babe?” Lup said.

“This is the nightmare scenario,” Taako said. He held the globe out to her.

She inspected the images in it, scrolling through Lucretia’s version of a Fantasy PowerPoint. It took her a long minute to figure it out.

“Holy shit,” she whispered. “This is some gender essentialism here. Woah.”

“Right?” Taako said. 

“We’re gonna have to figure out who’s clothes are who’s,” Lup said, dawning horror in her voice. The crew’s collective wardrobe had become just that—a collective. Anyone who could fit into an item of clothing could wear it and no one would comment. There were a few exceptions (sturdy, denim pants were something Barry would never be able to give up, and Taako had a whole closet no one was allowed to touch) but most clothes migrated from crew member to crew member.

Taako shook his head, mouth set in a firm line. “Absolutely not.” 

“ _I’m_ going to have to wear skirts,” Lup said. “Like, all the time, not just when I want to. And _you_ can’t.”

Taako rested his forehead against the floor in defeat. “Fuck.”

“Can’t you just pretend to be whichever twin you wanna dress like?” Merle asked, peering over Lup’s shoulder at the absolutely binary split of clothes that covered the people on this plane from neck to toe, shoulder to wrist. 

“It’s a pronouns thing,” Taako said, before Lup could open her mouth. “Plus, I don’t wanna give up my brand.”

“All about that brand,” Lup said, resting her hand on her brother’s head in wordless thanks. He gave her a thumbs up, which could apply to her words or her actions or her unspoken sentiment—she decided to assume it was all three, and started fingercombing his hair as she peered more deeply into the crystal. 

The silhouettes the clothes made were pretty standard, all about waists and chests and less about legs. It seemed almost uniform; whether the person was an elf or a human or a gnome or an orc, they were bundled up tight. Hats featured heavily, keeping the cold at bay and spreading into weird shapes that moved out of the realm of fashion and function, and into the realm of funky art. There were some gloves but a lot of barehanded folk, and while the ladies wore rings no matter what was on their hands, there was a glaring difference at the tips of the digits.

“Magnus, I don’t see any dudes here with painted nails,” Lup called. 

“What?” he groaned, trying to lift up his head without spilling the drink balanced on his chest.

“Let him be,” Lucretia said softly. “There have to be some gender-nonconforming people here somewhere. We’re just seeing pieces of the population. Um. Well, a lot of the population, actually. It’s a pretty thorough spell…”

“How can everyone dress with the same fuckin’ silhouette?” Taako said. “How can they stand it?”

“I don’t know,” Lup said gloomily. “Maybe all the creativity’s in the hats. Man, this is shaping up to be a very not-fun Year Sixty-nine.”

“We could pretend it’s like a game,” Magnus suggested. “That’s what my grandma would do when we had to visit, like, shitty tourist towns Gramps wanted to go to. She’d make up a mission for us to do and we’d do it. It was awesome. Touch every post on the boardwalk without anyone seeing. Make every raven flap its wings. That kind of shit.”

“What’s a good mission for an entire world that’s uptight about fashion?” Lup asked, skimming through more of Lucretia’s pictures with a somewhat frantic energy.

“I dunno,” Magnus said. “Fart a bunch and then lift your skirt up and run away?”

There was a silence.

“It’s a long skirt thing, right?” Magnus said, trying to focus. The Tongueblaster (gods what a name) made it hard for him to focus but he cracked an eyelid and stared blearily at Lup.

“You’re a genius when you’re drunk, Magnus,” Taako said, dead serious. "Fart ninja tactics are very, very good."

“I bet we could steal a bunch of shit and hide it in my skirt, too,” Lup said thoughtfully. “Listen, it’s bad form, having that much space to fill. Just begging to get robbed.”

“See,” Magnus said, smiling. He let his head thump back to the ground. “Creative thinking.”

“That’s the motto for Year Sixty-nine,” Lup said, smirking.

"Oh god," Barry sighed, refilling his mug from the keg of cider.

Taako nodded, his grin wide and sleazy. “Year Sixty-nine: Think Creatively.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The shitty year on the trash planet that Merle hated is visually based (at least in my mind) on the trash world from _Thor: Ragnorak_.
> 
> Also, it's slow going right now but I have plans for all the chapters left until we hit the end, so do not fear! I'm just caught up to myself; I was so far ahead for a while there but no longer. I'll finish this, though. I haven't left a fic hanging yet.


	16. Years 74-82

Lup began sorting through her notes one day and saw the common thread. 

This world was hostile, in Year 74. The gangs of centaurs that roamed the forests, the sirens in the sea, and the harpies in the air were slowly ripping the human attempts at ingenuity apart. There were no elves anymore. The dwarves were too deep in the mountains for anyone to contact. The twins, Merle, and the Captain had to stick around the _Starblaster_ to keep from being noticed and commented on by everyone. Taako could Polymorph, and Lup was willing to Glamour it up to get some fresh air, but saving spell slots was important to keep in mind when death could come from literally any terrain.

Sticking around the _Starblaster_ , trying to parse the rumors and suggestions that this world thrived on, Lup got bored. She started finishing half-done projects that she’d given up because they were dull; nothing could be more boring than the constant, low-grade fear of attack that the humans lived with and the _Starblaster_ crew was picking up on. 

Her notes spanned decades. She was dating a necromancer and all her most frantic work came after someone had died. She was working on nothing, picking at pieces of knowledge and scraps of spells that popped up in the worlds where magic-users were more forthcoming. 

Merle helped her sort through the magic for a while. He was quiet when she asked if he’d spoken to John last year—Lup had beefed it a little over halfway through when hostage negotiations with the Lava Trolls went sour and Lup went off at them for wiping out an entire village. She’d assumed he was keeping up with the Hunger but when she asked if he’d managed to beat that motherfucker in the suit at chess yet, he’d frozen. He said something bright and deflective after a moment but it still struck her. She didn’t mention the Hunger again.

Instead, she kept Merle close, let him invent complicated color-coding systems, and watched her stacks of notes grow and grow. The pile having to do with death rituals was easily twice as big as the others.

“Shit, Lup, you studying to be an acolyte of the Raven Queen or something?” Merle laughed, adding yet another set of notes to the ‘death’ file.

“I don’t commit easily, babe,” Lup said. “Just ask Barry.”

Merle chortled some more and went back to reading with his tongue between his teeth, but Lup considered her stacks.

The ordering system stayed on into the next cycle, when Barry resurrected. She gave Taako his welcome squeeze, even though neither of them had come close to dying this time around, and then she darted over to Barry and gave him a thorough nuzzling. He was blushing and grinning while the crew boo’d the display, and then Lup dragged him off to see her newly organized notes.

“…And this is the _pièce de résistance_ , hon,” Lup said, sweeping her arm grandly to indicate the crowded wooden boxes stacked in a pyramid.

“What’s that mean?” Barry said.

“These are all my notes on death.”

He looked up at her, eyebrows raised above the rims of his glasses. “Well, fuck. I’m rubbing off on you.”

“In more ways than one, yes.”

He bumped her arm with his shoulder and turned back to the files. “What are you going to do with it all?”

“Remember all those times we’ve died? Remember how I had to cool my heels for a few months without you because someone ran a stop sign with their fucking cart last cycle? Remember how hard we have to run, how hard we have to work to stick around? Remember how we’ve all, at one point or another, caught a bug so nasty, there was nothing we could do, even with divine intervention?”

“…Yeah.”

Lup put her arm around Barry and gave him a squeeze. “Fuck that.”

“Oh?”

“I read your thesis. It sparked something in me, babe. Right now, I think we have the time and inclination to see it through.”

Barry smiled, eyes still on all of her papers. “God, Lup, you’re…” He shook his head. “There’s nothing you won’t do for us.”

“Let’s go beat death, babe,” she said, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

It required more notes and more refined research into some very narrow areas of afterlife, undeath, pacts, and spirituality. The physical stuff wasn’t a priority, which was probably for the best—Merle was the best at anatomy, thanks to his medical background, and there was no way he’d condone these practices. He was a nature guy, and this definitely went against one of the biggest laws of nature. It was all about minds, though. Minds and thoughts and, as they delved further into their research, feelings.

“We need a big, shining moment,” Lup decided, somewhere into year 3 of their research.

“What?” Barry said, peeling his face off his newest tome. He fumbled for his glasses and slid them on, then winced; he’d broken them early this cycle and the prescription that they’d managed to scrounge for him out of this world’s materials was really off. 

“Listen, I’m talking about memory,” Lup said. “Memories and feelings are all tied up together, and what we need is some memories to remind us of who we are and of why we’re doing this fucked up undeath thing.”

Barry squinted at her. It wrinkled his nose up and it was cute as hell. She was seeing a lot of this face since the busted glasses incident. “You think memories would be a good anchor?”

“Babe, you come up with such good words for this shit!”

“It’s— Ahh, Lup!” He jerked back from her hug. “Watch the elbows, I can’t dodge right now. I didn’t come up with the term, love. It’s used in a lot of different rituals that draw on a particular person or spirit. Mostly summoning things.”

“Sorry,” Lup said, nuzzling him with a little less enthusiastic grabbing. “But it’s a good term!”

“Yeah, it makes sense. All right, so we need a good memory first?”

“Well, no. First we need a world that has the time and space for us to build a really fucking good day. And then I have to tell Taako.”

“Oh.”

Lup pulled back to get a good look at Barry, right in his attempting-to-focus-on-her eyes. “Babe, you know I have to tell him. I’m not gonna spring this on my boy.”

“No, no, I know that and I, I wouldn’t expect you to keep it from him completely or anything, but uh. Are you sure it’s a good idea to just… tell people?”

“Not until we’re really set on the plan, no. But like, we’re not gonna be able to keep _turning into liches_ a secret, Barry. The whole point is that we’re leveling up for the good of the team.”

Barry’s entire face was a wince.

“Babe, did you not think about the fact that we’re gonna have to tell people about being liches?”

Barry’s face winced harder.

Lup pulled his crushed-up expression into her shoulder and sighed. “Well, we do have to tell them. They’re gonna find out the hard way or the easy way.”

Mumbled into her shoulder, she felt Barry say, “What about a demo? Like, we could work on showing them we became liches for the good of the crew and the mission. Way less likelihood of Davenport losing his shit over it or Merle yelling.”

“Forgiveness instead of permission?” Lup considered this suggestion while she started working her hands under the back of Barry’s shirt. “That could work.”

“Uh, Lup, you’re—“

“Shhh, I have been distracted and I’m trying to distract you, too. I think it’s bedtime.”

“They’re nocturnal here, love—“

“My body says bedtime, how about yours?”

Right after the transition into the next cycle, Barry pointed out that they’d have to work out a way to make the changes stick through the restitching of their bodies that happened when they changed planes.

“Fuck,” Lup said. “Shit fuck damn. Okay. Well. Fuck.”

“We’ll figure it out, Lup,” Barry said. “We’re really fucking good wizards. We have time.”

“We’ve had time,” she sighed. “A lot of it. Fuck, this is a setback. How did I fucking forget we rest? Whatever, okay, yeah. Whatever. It’ll come to us.”

It took another few cycles before they found a world conducive to the magic they wanted—needed—to do. They needed light, joy, good food, and the possibility of a vacation. Building the perfect day to remember their lich-selves back to sanity was going to be a challenge, but definitely one worth doing right.

They ended up on a world gone wonky. It was _quiet_. There were no people, no animals. The waves in the oceans had stopped. There was no wind. The sun was still in the sky, just a few minutes after sunrise. There were cities and signs of civilization, mostly built along the coast of the motionless sea, but there was nobody in them. 

The reason for the world’s silence was immediately obvious; the western horizon was a purple shimmering field that stretched up and up and up and up, where the Plane of Magic cut into the world. Davenport gave it a wide berth when he took the _Starblaster_ down; there were just waves of energy coming off of the intersection of these planes that were way too dangerous to approach. But it was always there, taking up half of the horizon. They were in a frozen time.

“Eerie,” Magnus whispered. “Magic’s fuckin’ weird.”

“Fucking with planar alignment is weird,” Barry corrected him.

“Still, we need to send a scouting party,” Davenport said. “Be careful out there. Keep away from the massive purple disc.”

“Yeah, no shit, _Dad_ ,” Taako said, grinning.

“Can I go with Fisher?” Magnus asked.

Davenport ignored Taako, and instead told Magnus, “I don’t see why not, if it can float outside it's tank. Anyone else?”

“I’ll go with Merle,” Lucretia said.

Taako raised an eyebrow. “I mean, I can do a solo mish, but I—“

“Come with me and Fisher!” Magnus said eagerly.

“Yeah, all right.”

Barry and Lup exchanged a look. Barry smiled slightly. “I guess it’s you and me, Lup.”

“I actually need both of you to stick with me,” Davenport said. “That Plane of Magic bisecting the Material Plane is bizarre and I want you to help interpret readings.”

“So, no one get close to the big purple plane except three of us?” Lup said.

“Exactly,” Davenport said. “The rest of you, pick a direction.”

“Dibs on north!” Magnus called.

“Why call dibs on it?” Taako asked.

“North is the best direction, obviously.”

“We can go south,” Lucretia said.

“Great,” Davenport said. “We’ll reconvene in a week, after the Light of Creation falls. If those of us on the _Starblaster_ see it, we’ll pick it up; otherwise, see you all back here in seven days. Got it?”

The consensus was affirmative.

“What are we calling this zone?” Merle asked.

Davenport shrugged. “We might find some information if we keep hunting. The buildings look intact, so documents may have survived whatever happened. Keep your eyes out for explanations, though.”

They were closing in on the purple Plane of Magic when knowledge bloomed in the base of Lup’s brain. She gripped the back of Davenport’s seat and gritted her teeth. “What the fuck?”

“Fisher,” Davenport sighed. “I guess they found something.”

“They were doing some incredible magic,” Barry said, awe in his voice.

“Don’t get ideas, babe, they did rip a plane out of orbit in the worst fucking way.”

He gave her an offended look. She stuck her tongue out at him, and then froze, tongue forgotten as realizations hit her.

“Woah, babe.”

“What?”

“We _remember_.”

Barry’s brow wrinkled. “Uh.”

“I mean, across planes and shit. We remember. Doesn’t matter what happens to our bodies, our brains transfer over completely. And so does Fisher, which is still weird as hell to me, but maybe it has something to do with how it processes memory? Like, memories are all that can cross the barrier.”

“Memories and damage,” Davenport grumbled. His favorite seat cushion had worn out a decade ago and he was still grouchy about it. 

“Yeah,” Lup said. “Memories and inanimate objects.”

Barry beamed at her.

“Say,” Lup drawled, resting a hand on Davenport’s shoulder, “bossman? If we get the Light early on and if there’s nothing here, as there appears to be nothing here, can we have a chill time?”

“I would like nothing better, Lup,” Davenport said, hands steady on the wheel. “Now, can you and Barry tell me what’s up with the plane and why no people or animals exist here?”

“We’ll do our best,” Lup said. Her stomach felt like the night before Candlenights, all jumping anticipation and a bit of horniness. She had to bite her cheek pretty hard to keep from casting some triumphant fireworks from her hands.

It was gonna be this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I deffo took the description of the Empty World straight from TAZ Transcripts—thanks, guys!
> 
> I tried to think of a Nice Day that Barry would give Lup and I just couldn't come up with anything epic enough. Definitely a jam session happened, but other than that? Not sure. And I think Lup picked a day where they had some kind of breakthrough scientific discovery about the world and just told him to remember this one, where they worked together and figured out something awesome. They seem to really like working together? Sticking together as Reapers for the Raven Queen seems like a lot, you're spending a lot of time together at that point, so they must like it. I can't imagine.


	17. Year 84

“Okay, blowing it up didn’t _exactly_ work.” The metal railing digs into her palms as she stares out, searching for the next world now that she’s back in her body. “But we’re close. We’re _real_ fucking close.”

“What the fuck was that?” Magnus said, in the silence after her very bold declaration.

“What was what?” Lup said.

“You became… You died but then you were a ghost?” Magnus waved his arms in helpless confusion. “Seriously, what the fuck was that?”

She reached out blindly behind her and found a hand. It was shorter and softer than the one she’d held all her life, because it wasn’t Taako she was standing with; it was Barry. Taako was leaning against a wall, arms crossed over his chest, smirking in the way he knew she hated. His hands rested on opposite biceps, long and bony and burn-scarred and knife-nicked. She knew his hands as well as she knew her own. 

Lup snapped back to this moment, squeezed Barry’s hand, and said, “Well, babes, we’re liches now.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Magnus said.

“Y-you’re _what_?” Lucretia said at the same time. The horror in her voice suggested she knew _exactly_ what a lich was.

Davenport was frowning, not in rage or disappointment but in a way that suggested he was trying to remember something complicated that he’d learned long ago.

Merle took a deep breath that caught in his chest for a moment. He took a step back.

“What?” Magnus said, looking around. “It sounds bad, right? It’s bad. What’s a lich?”

Lup looked down at Barry, who was looking up at her. He was flinching again, but he said, “It’s, uh, it’s when you take your, your essence, your soul, and you mix it with magic and, and you get a lich. It’s like a magic ghost?”

“You’re really good at explaining this,” Lup said.

“That’s not right at all,” Lucretia said. “Like, barely even a little right.”

“Yeah,” Merle said, his voice slower and heavier than Lup had ever heard. He sounded scared and angry at the same time. He sounded betrayed.

Barry’s hand was slick in hers and she couldn’t tell if it was because she was sweating too hard or he was. She took a deep breath. They’d decided to ask for forgiveness instead of permission and, well, this was where they were now.

“Liches go mad,” Lucretia said to Magnus. “They’re evil. They’re undead.”

“Evil ghosts,” Magnus said softly. His eyes were huge.

Lup mustered up the most skeptical, sarcastic face she could. She raised one eyebrow and twisted her mouth up a little and said, “Uh, _yeah_ , we are now _evil ghosts_. What the fuck, Lucretia? We’re still Lup and Barry.”

“Think fast,” Taako said, and Lup barely managed to roll a high enough dexterity save to snatch the pillow he launched at her.

“Hey!” she yelped.

“Not a ghost,” he said, and went back to leaning against the wall. “I guess you all can try to figure out if they’re evil, but honestly, I don’t think you’ll get very far with that one.”

“Yeah, we’re wily,” Lup said, grinning as she threw the pillow back at her brother.

Davenport sighed heavily. “All right. It’s done. I’ve got to go steer us to wherever we’ll be spending this year. I want to know more about this, but at the same time I have no interest in learning more about this. So, Lup?”

“Hm, yeah?”

“Barry?”

Barry jerked and said, “Y-yes?”

“I would like a report. In writing. No help from Lucretia—“

“No kidding,” Lucretia muttered.

“—but I want to know what you’re planning to do with this… ability you two now have. I don’t need or want to know methods, but I want to know why and for what purpose. Got it?”

“Yessir,” Barry said quickly.

“You’re the boss,” Lup said. “Makes sense, too.”

Davenport gave them a curt nod. “The rest of you, resolve any issues you have before we hit the new world. We don’t know what we’ll run into, and it never hurts to be prepared. We can’t be prepared if you’re all worried about… God. Crewmates being liches.” He shook his head as he walked out of the room. “None of the management classes in the world could have prepared me for this crew.”

“No kidding! This is fucked up,” Merle said, drawing the word ‘fuck’ into at least ten syllables. 

“Yeah,” Magnus said. He looked kind of sick.

“I want to read your report, when the captain’s done with it,” Lucretia said, and she ducked out as well. She hated seeing a fight.

It was just the silly boy squad and Lup and Barry in the common room, now. Lup looked at Taako. He shrugged but didn’t move from his spot, spectating but poised to step in with some diffusing one-liner or another thrown cushion if it proved necessary. 

Magnus was watching Lup closely, like he expected her to go ghost any second and didn’t want to miss the magical girl transformation sequence.

Merle was glaring at Barry. “There’s a _cycle_ to this shit. Fuckin’ necromancy is _never_ the way.”

“Mmm, it’s kind of a little bit the way, though,” Lup said.

“It’s the best weapon we’ve gotten since the robots,” Barry said. 

“That’s a damn lie,” Merle said. 

“Plus, who said cycles are good?” Lup said, ignoring that comment. “We’re stuck in a loop, sort of, and I want to get out of it, and maybe this is a way to do that.”

“No, it isn’t!” Merle yelled. “You and your boy got into some shit that’s taboo for a reason!”

“Nah,” Lup said.

Merle sighed heavily, and she had to smile. Maintaining righteous anger was, weirdly, not something their cleric was good at. 

“Lup,” Merle said, “you scared me. Barry, you too, I guess. But Lup, you’re such a force for good, and necromancy’s… Well, I’ve never seen it used for good.”

“It’s just knowledge, Merle,” Barry piped up. “It’s, it’s really just in how you use it.”

“And we’re using it for something that’s more, mmm, self-serving and badass than it is good, but I wouldn’t say trying to destroy a malevolent planar system that consumes entire worlds is necessarily an _evil_ thing,” Lup added.

Taako coughed once, sharp, and Lup had a moment of wondering what she’d done wrong before she remembered that Merle had been besties with that malevolent planar system’s avatar for a few decades.

Merle was, indeed, giving her the stink-eye.

“Kinda wish you’d said something first,” Magnus said. He glanced back and added, “I mean, I assume you told Taako cuz he’s not sulking too hard right now, but the rest of us… I mean, we’re family, too, right? At this point?”

Lup let go of Barry’s hand, feeling the slick of sweat immediately turn cold in the open air. She walked the couple of steps to Magnus and gripped his shoulders. “Babe, you are family. But not everything’s worth deciding by consensus. Major things, mission things, those are. When it’s personal? I mean, come on, we don’t convene to debate when it’s time to learn new spells or get a haircut.”

Magnus barked out a single, shocked laugh. “This is more than a haircut! Or a spell!”

“It’s a full-body haircut and a shitload of spells,” Lup said solemnly. “But it’s also personal. I mean, yeah, we’re doing it for the mish, but it’s our bodies and our magic and our lives. As a group we decided early on to stop doing dangerous shit just because we reset—“ Lup shot a meaningful glance at Barry, who had definitely done some questionable experiments, and then let her gaze drag past Merle “I Parlay All Fuckin’ Day” Highchurch ”—but this is like, the opposite of that. We’re _not_ dying for the mission or for knowledge, we’re sticking around longer.”

“…Okay,” Magnus said quietly. 

Lup gave his shoulders a quick rub and then backed up and looked at Merle. “You’ll get our reasoning in writing once we do our punishment essay for Dad’n’port, but what’re your hang-ups at this point, Merle? I wanna know. ”

Merle gave a crooked shrug. “I guess it’s done. You are what you are now—”

“Lup and Barry,” Lup said. “Same as we always are. Same as we’ll always be.”

Merle made a skeptical whine but continued, “So we’ll figure out what that means if you, like, stick around for more than ten seconds to try and blow shit up right at the end of a cycle.”

“Oh, shit, true,” Lup said, turning to give Barry a wide-eyed look.

He was smiling faintly. “We’re going to look sort of spooky, Lup.”

“Yeah, we went with the robes cuz I was starting to freak out about what clothes I want my ghost to wear forever.”

“Plus jacket,” Taako called from his place against the wall.

Lup shot him a couple finger-guns. “With the jacket, yes, thanks for reminding me.”

Taako gave her a thumbs up. “Looked good.”

“It always does. But, if it’s just robes and, well, a spectral skeleton situation under the hood, I suppose it’s going to be spooky. But y’all can deal, right?”

“We’ve been to a literal horror planet world,” Barry reminded them. “With reanimation and werewolves and everything.”

“The Frankenstein was hot,” Taako said.

Barry gave Taako an exasperated look but Lup smiled. If Taako was butting in, the tension was gone. He was good at keeping people laughing or puzzled or off-balance to keep them from being angry. Merle was chuckling already, so this was a win for Taako. Lup watched her brother’s shoulders settle, watched his foot start tapping against the floor.

“Magnus?” Lup said. “Merle? Are we cool?”

The men looked at each other, then at Lup and Barry. 

“Yeah,” Magnus said, like it was obvious.

“Well, I guess,” Merle said. “Don’t go spying on me with your incorporeal ghost bodies, though.”

“Merle,” Lup said, “I can promise you, it literally never crossed my mind and now I wish I could erase my memories to make sure I never have to think about it again.”

Merle smirked. “Yeah, keep tellin’ yourself that. I know you all are curious.”

“About _what_?” Magnus said, horrified.

Merle chuckled again. “Ohhoho. I think you know.”

“I have an essay to write,” Barry says quickly.

“Yeah, me too,” Lup says. “Let’s use Taako’s room. Coming, Taako?”

“Yep, yep, getting out of here,” Taako said, and Magnus nearly vaulted over Merle in a rush to follow them away from whatever Merle was trying to sell them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy this 420 blaze it chapter. It had nothing to do with the holiday but I got a 69 joke in this fic earlier and today is April 20th so. Some nice synergy going on with this fic!


	18. Year 89

Barry was kicking it as a ghost this cycle. Lucretia was still oh-for-89 on death, and Lup felt good about still being in the early 20s, but Merle had also been part of the spelunking expedition that killed Barry, and Barry said quite firmly that no one was going to be able to come back from that. 

“Earthquakes up close and personal? No,” he said. “They’re not conducive to survival. They’re also terrifying. Can we hover the ship at all?”

“Yes,” Davenport said, getting to his feet.

“No,” Magnus snapped. “We gotta be here for these people.”

“Fisher should stay and float on the ship,” Lup said, just as Davenport was about to open his mouth and start exercising his rank.

“Oh, shit,” Magnus said. “Never mind, you’re right.”

Davenport shot her a grateful look, then said to Barry, “Can you check the status of our weapons hookups, while you’re incorporeal?”

Barry made a chuckling noise that was weirdly raspy. Everyone flinched, even Lup. Barry stopped quickly and said, “Uh, yes. On it, Captain.”

He drifted into the floor and away.

“That was very spooky,” Taako said, finally.

“Spooky-ooky,” Magnus agreed.

Lup got up and left the table. If she left it smoking a little from where her hands had slammed into the wood, so be it.

Taako found her later. She was working on a mapping project with Davenport; this plane, in addition to the frequent earthquakes, had a maze of canyons and they didn’t want to retrace old routes by accident in their search for the Light. 

“Do you even use compass calipers for this shit?” Lup asked, twirling the circle-making object in question.

“ _Yes_ ,” Davenport said. He held out a hand. 

“Why haven’t we fixed the display?” Lup asked. She kept twirling the compass by its little twiddly point.

“Because hand-mapping isn’t too bad if we can do a flyover scan of the terrain and evaluate the printouts,” Davenport said. “The last plane was good on supplies for printing, not for fixing a blown optical core.”

“They did have some fun moveable type,” Lup said.

“Give me the compass.”

“Rightio, Cap’n.”

“Lup?” Taako said.

“I’m mad at you,” Lup said, giving the compass a final spin before she placed it in Davenport’s waiting palm. “Do you know _why_ I’m mad at you?” 

“I can guess.”

“Tell me.”

“Uh,” Davenport said.

Taako ignored him. “I made fun of Barry.”

“No, Taako.”

“I mean, I did do that.”

“You’re being super uncool about us being liches!” Lup slammed a hand on the desk where they’d spread out the map and turned to face her brother, who was wearing jammies of all things—a knee-length hoodie that said “Hottie” and plaid flannel pants. “What time is it?”

Taako’s eyes slid away from hers. “…Early.”

“Two in the morning,” Davenport supplied. “Two seventeen, to be—“

“Go the fuck to sleep!” Lup snarled at her brother. “Go to bed! I don’t wanna hear your bullshit when you’re all insomniac and fucked up!”

“I feel bad!” Taako yelled back. “I’m fuckin’ sorry, okay?”

“You’re sorry for _what_? Be specific, my dude!”

Taako’s voice dropped almost immediately, cracked and small. “I’m sorry I keep saying you’re scary when you’re ghosts.”

“We’re just us,” Lup said, matching his volume. “We’re Barry and Lup.”

“Lup and Barry,” Taako corrected her.

“Whatever.”

“Listen,” Taako says, his voice soft and sincere and all for her. “I’m sorry. I am.”

“Good. I accept it this time. Stop making cracks about us being liches though, all right? We have enough issues as a crew anyway, I don’t want you stirring up the shit.”

“What issues?” Davenport said. “Wait, Lup, what issues?”

“Most of us have a lot of feelings we don’t know how to deal with since we do a hard reset every year, and we’re getting hella codependent if we weren’t there already,” Lup said.

“And we’ve all got a sense of humor to hide this shit,” Taako added.

“Yes, thank you Taako, I forgot to add that we all have developed some seriously grim humor.”

Davenport stared from one twin to the other. “You’re really self-aware about this.”

“Well, I’m not gonna run down the _Starblaster_ halls yelling about it, but yeah,” Taako said, shrugging. “We aren’t stupid, I just play stupid on TV.”

Lup waved Taako towards her and, when he stepped closer, she gave him a tight hug. “Love you, Taako.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course you do, I’m amazing.”

She dug her sharp, Magnus-painted fingernails into his back. “Is that what you wanted to say?”

“No, nope, love you too, sorry, I fucked that one right up—“

“It’s important to learn from your mistakes,” she purred, and let him go.

Davenport watched Taako shuffle off to bed. “I think that’s the first time I’ve seen you two fight.”

“We fight a lot.”

“You mock-fight. You’re funny in the fight.”

“No, Dav, we do fight. You just don’t see it. It’s kind of a game to us; we don’t make it obvious to anyone. He must’ve felt really bad about this one, to bring it up in front of you.” 

“Wait, so even when you’re fighting, it’s still a game to keep it hidden from the rest of us?”

“Mmm yeah, kind of.”

“It’s a Taako-and-Lup team effort, no matter what?”

Lup grinned at him. “We always prefer it that way.”

Davenport smiled back at her. “You two are incredible.”

“I can’t tell from your tone if that was meant to be admiring or horrified.”

“Lup, it’s both.”

Lup laughed and slapped his shoulder a few times. “That’s fair. I’d be in awe of us, too. I still am, even though I am ‘us.’”

“I’m a little worried about crew morale…”

“Nothing some planning and scheming won’t fix, once we hit a cycle where we have time to do both. It’s been almost ninety years, Captain; we’re used to taking care of ourselves and each other in very specific ways. It’s a pattern, now. Can’t break it.”

“Well, we can technically break it if—“

“Ah ah ah ah,” Lup said quickly. “We’re mapping right now. Can’t break the flow. Can’t break the pattern. We have tactics and strategies and I, personally, want to experience my own shit my own way right now.”

Davenport was frowning now, a worried divot between his thick brows. “I want to make sure everyone feels supported—“

“Maybe there’s a seminar you can take,” Lup said, injecting as much sarcasm as she dared into her tone. It wasn’t a kind thing to say but this wasn’t a topic she was interested in pursuing.

Davenport gave her a sharp look, like he knew exactly what she was trying to do. Then he sighed. “Maybe next cycle.”

“Yeah. See if you can put off paying for the course for a year, though. No reason not to try and save some money if you can.”

Davenport rolled his eyes. “The money is the first thing to change every cycle, Lup. We have a lot of currency to unload.”

“Yeah but maybe I want to start a coin collection. No, that’s definitely not going to happen. Here, this is more realistic: maybe you should start a coin collection.”

Davenport chuckled through his exhausted sigh. “Come on, Lup. Let’s finish this up and go to bed. I have a lot of seminar brochures to find and then read tomorrow.”

Lup gave him a teasing nudge and bent over the maps with him. She could feel how close his head was to hers, poring over the page together, burning that 2am oil and not speaking about things she didn’t want to speak about.


End file.
